"History should belong to all of us and it needs to include people from different cultural backgrounds. Otherwise it risks becoming irrelevant to children who could then become disenchanted with education.... We need more books that are specifically about the BME [black and minority ethnic] British experience, and that's why I bang the drum for getting more diverse books out there, and for getting rid of the idea that if a book contains pictures of a black or Asian child, it's going to have a limited market."

A week after Colorado booksellers and newsstands challenged a law restricting the display of marijuana-themed magazines, the State of Colorado agreed yesterday not to enforce it and acknowledged that the law is unconstitutional.

"We believed strongly that this law violated the First Amendment rights of our customers and feel vindicated by the government agreeing that it is unconstitutional," said Joyce Meskis of the Tattered Cover Book Store, Denver. "The agreement today confirms that the state cannot prosecute booksellers for giving their customers access to material that is fully protected by the Constitution simply because the legislature does not agree with the message."

"The strong opposition by Colorado booksellers played an important role in the speedy resolution of this case," said Chris Finan, president of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, which had joined the Tattered Cover, Boulder Book Store, the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association and several newsstands in challenging the law. 

Yesterday at the keynote of its Worldwide Developers Conference, Apple announced the availability of iBooks on Mavericks, the next version of OS X for Mac computers, which is expected to be released in the fall.

TechCrunch noted that iBooks "has long been the 'third' e-book store after Amazon's Kindle store and Barnes & Noble's Nook. This move increases the app's visibility on the desktop and allows users to purchase books on one platform that are available to read on mobile devices."

The Digital Reader suggested that the move "could be a sign that Apple is growing more interested in selling e-books, but I think it is more likely that Apple simply woke up to the fact that they were neglecting to sell e-book content on all of their hardware. Not having an OSX app left money on the table."

Natasha Trethewey was appointed to a second term as U.S. poet laureate yesterday by Librarian of Congress James Billington, who cited her efforts to connect with the public. The Washington Post reported that Threthewey's "weekly hours at the Library were made possible by her choice--unprecedented in recent years--to relocate to Washington from her home in Georgia, giving her a better venue to receive visiting poetry lovers." 

"What I learned was how people perceived poetry in America," said Trethewey. "How, maybe, people have turned to poetry for a lot more reasons than we know about.... A lot of people came because they heard the question I [said I] wanted answered at the beginning of my term. Which was: The role of the laureate is to bring poetry to a wider audience; I wanted to know how I might do that."

Although she will return to Atlanta for her second term, Trethewey hopes to expand her venue across the country, and a "signature project will involve filming a regular feature on the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series, in which she and senior correspondent Jeffrey Brown travel the country for a series of on-location specials that examine societal issues through a poetic lens."

After 35 years in business, Sally Lesser, founder of specialty toys and books retailer Henry Bear's Park, plans to retire and has initiated a search for a new owner who "would shepherd the business through the next 30 years." With three locations in family-centered communities (Cambridge, Arlington and Brookline, Mass.), Henry Bear's Park is strong and poised for future growth, according to Lesser.

"It's the right time," she said. "Business is very good, and there are many exciting possibilities for growth. Those opportunities are best tackled by someone with a long future ahead of them. I'm hoping to work with new owners through the business transition, as I move towards my retirement."

"Families in the Boston area care deeply about the impact these products have on their children," Lesser observed. "Our staff knows well the developmental aspects of our toys. A whole community of parents relies on us to provide the best products for their children, and the best advice to them as they make their selections. We have maintained our standards in products and service for over a generation, and it feels wonderful to see many of the children who used to play at Henry Bear's Park, now grown and coming back to us as parents themselves. One won't find this in a big box store or on-line. Knowing that we have a strong connection to these children and families, I have allocated plenty of time to find someone who will appreciate the value of this long tradition. It could take a month or a year, but it is important to me to make a good transition for our customers, our staff, and our communities."   

Henry Bear's Park is represented by Paul Siegenthaler of Ridge Hill Partners. For more information, contact him 781-453-9984.

"Detroit-Shoreway is getting hipper and hipper by the month," Cleveland Scene observed in its coverage of last Saturday's grand opening "pARTy in Gordon Square" for Guide to Kulchur, "a bookstore-cum-zine-making-paradise-cum-hangout helmed by the blissfully wedded academics Liz Bly (Ph.D!) and RA Washington."

On the shop's Facebook page, Bly wrote: "Mostly, thank you to my husband, RA Washington, for making the space what it is, especially for seeing it on days when no one else (including me) understood that there is a need for a place where classic literature, pulpy-campy fiction, theory, and zines and the DIY ethos can coalesce. People were happy that there's a bookstore in GS... they were excited about the collection of books that we amassed.... Clevelanders are smart and hungry for creativity and ideas. Yesterday proved that for me, for sure."

Today is the official launch day for Simon & Schuster's new Customer Portal for booksellers, featuring the Premier Marketing Plan. The Customer Portal consolidates marketing/co-op information, order tracking, invoices, digital catalogues and promotional information. At launch, S&S had preregistered approximately 800 accounts in its database.

"Our goal is to make getting information about your business with Simon & Schuster as easy and accessible as possible, and with our new Customer Portal we have taken a big step in that direction," said Michael Selleck, executive v-p, sales and marketing. "We hope all eligible booksellers will take advantage of this new service."

It was a stormy night in Houston, but that didn't deter fans of Sarah Dessen, who appeared at Blue Willow Bookshop last week to read from her new YA novel, The Moon and More (Penguin Young Readers). It was Dessen's birthday, too; the store provided a cake, and fans turned up with cupcakes and other treats. The whole crowd sang her happy birthday and she made a wish and blew out the candles!

Mystery author and Alaska resident Dana Stabenow, whose books include the Kate Shugak series, has launched a campaign to raise $1 million to help build Storyknife Writers Retreat for female authors. Stabenow has established a crowd-sourced funding effort on Storyknife's website, as well as her own fan sites, as the initial phase in a larger effort to raise $21 million to cover the costs of developing the property and ensuring its continuing legacy through a $20 million endowment.

The inspiration for Stabenow's effort was a residency she experienced early in her career at the Hedgebrook Farm retreat for women writers on Whidbey Island, Wash. "It was the first time anyone ever acted like writing was a real job," she said. "So far as we can discover, Hedgebrook Farm is the only writers retreat for women in existence."  

Explaining the name, she recalled that she "came across mention of storyknives in one of the early explorer diaries and I couldn't rest until I knew more. As a traditional Alaska Native vehicle for storytelling, it is the perfect metaphor for what we hope to accomplish at Storyknife. I'm hoping we get a lot of Alaska Native women writers applying for residencies at Storyknife, too."

Effective immediately, Rebecca T. Miller has been named editorial director of Library Journals, serving as editor-in-chief for both Library Journal and School Library Journal. Miller had been the editor-in-chief of SLJ.

Effective July 8, Jacob Lewis is joining the Crown Publishing Group as v-p, publishing director, for Crown, Hogarth and Broadway Books, a newly created position, where he will work with senior v-p and publisher Molly Stern on strategy and business development and have a special focus on publishing nonfiction titles and digital marketing initiatives.

Lewis is the CEO and co-founder of figment.com and earlier worked at the New Yorker for 12 years, most recently as managing editor, and was managing editor, Condé Nast Portfolio.

The Wig in the Window by Kristen Kittscher (HarperCollins).

Today on NPR's Talk of the Nation: Lauren Sandler, author of One and Only: The Freedom of Having an Only Child, and the Joy of Being One (Simon & Schuster, $24.99, 9781451626957).

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Tomorrow morning on CBS This Morning: Clyde Edgerton, author of Papadaddy's Book for New Fathers: Advice to Dads of All Ages (Little, Brown, $25, 9780316056922).

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Tomorrow morning on the Today Show: Carl Hiaasen, author of Bad Monkey (Knopf, $26.95, 9780307272591).

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Tomorrow morning on Good Morning America: Rebecca Bailey, co-author of Safe Kids, Smart Parents: What Parents Need to Know to Keep Their Children Safe (Simon & Schuster, $15, 9781476700441). She will also appear on CNN's Early Start.

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Tomorrow on MSNBC's the Cycle: Carl Hart, author of High Price: A Neuroscientist's Journey of Self-Discovery That Challenges Everything You Know About Drugs and Society (Harper, $26.99, 9780062015884).

The primary cast has been announced for Damon Lindelof's HBO pilot The Leftovers, based on the novel by Tom Perrotta, who co-wrote the script with Lindelof, Deadline.com reported. The project will star Justin Theroux, Carrie Coon, Ann Dowd (Compliance), former Dr. Who Christopher Eccleston and Amanda Warren (The Closer).

Winners of the 25th annual Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards are:
Biography: Road to Valour: A True Story of World War II Italy, the Nazis, and the Cyclist Who Inspired a Nation by Aili and Andres McConnon
Fiction: The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler
History: The Aleppo Codex: A True Story of Obsession, Faith, and the Pursuit of an
Ancient Bible by Matti Friedman
Holocaust literature: Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Simaite by Julija Sukys
Poetry: Something Small To Carry Home by Isa Milman
Scholarship: Nazi Germany, Canadian Responses: Confronting Antisemitism in the Shadow of War by L. Ruth Klein
Yiddish: Jacob-Isaac Segal 1869-1954 Un poete yiddish de montreal et son milieu by Pierre Anctil
Children & youth literature: Enemy Territory by Sharon E. McKay

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Finalists have been named for the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia Literary Awards, which include the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Evelyn Richardson Memorial Nonfiction Award. Winners will be announced September 21 in Halifax. You can find the shortlists for all three awards here.

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The Crime Writers of Canada announced winners of this year's Arthur Ellis Awards, with Giles Blunt taking the best novel prize for Until the Night. Quillblog featured a complete list of Arthur Ellis category winners.

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Shortlists for the Trillium Book Award, sponsored by the Government of the Province of Ontario, have been released for English- and French-language books, English-language poetry and French-language children's literature, Quillblog reported. Winners will be announced June 18 in Toronto.

For centuries, every medical student's rite of passage has been the gross anatomy dissection class. Huddled around a donor cadaver, a students take scalpels in hand and physically enter the intricate world of the human body. Even as some medical schools are moving toward a "hands-off" curriculum--studying instead professionally dissected and preserved body parts--most doctors still learn their anatomy the old-fashioned way. Cadaver dissection was even more important 150 years ago when it was the only effective way for potential physicians to see how the body works. In the late 1850s, however, there was no consistent process to obtain those cadavers. 

Matthew Guinn's debut novel, The Resurrectionist, is the story of Jacob Thacker, a recent graduate of the fictional University of South Carolina Medical School, and his discovery of the school's unsettling past--which is the story of a Senegalese slave named Nemo Johnston (né Cudjo), who was purchased by the founding faculty members a few years before the outbreak of the Civil War.

Jacob, serving as the school's public relations director while he waits out a postponement of his medical license for Xanax abuse, launches a PR campaign to celebrate the renovation of the original Medical School building, but the first day of excavation uncovers a mass cache of human bones. As Jacob digs through the library archives, he finds pictures and ledgers that reveal Nemo's role as the "resurrectionist" who digs up freshly buried slaves for the school's dissection classes.

Neatly juxtaposing the immense wealth and renown of the contemporary South Carolina Medical School against its avaricious origins, Guinn explores the broader issue of America's avoidance of its complicated and troubled history of slavery and race relations. His narrative alternates between the story of Jacob's personal ambitions and discomfort with his past and the story of Nemo, shunned by his fellow slaves and damned by their local itinerant carpenter/preacher as "hell-spawn." Both are survivors who do what they must in an unforgiving world. Although the novel ends with their personal redemption, it more effectively raises questions of how America itself can transcend its own racially difficult past--and learn from those who have come before, as physicians do, that "the dead are the key to the living." --Bruce Jacobs

Shelf Talker: Guinn's first novel explores the use of exhumed slaves for 19th-century anatomy classes at Southern medical schools, and the impact of this practice on the reputation of those schools today.

The following were the most popular book club books during May based on votes from more than 80,000 book club readers from more than 35,000 book clubs registered at Bookmovement.com:

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
2. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
3. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail by Cheryl Strayed
4. Unbroken: A World War II Tale of Survival, Resilience and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand
5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
6. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
7. Defending Jacob by William Landay
8. And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
9. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
10. Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Rising Stars:

And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline
The Burgess Boys by Elizabeth Strout

Pauline Hubert, president and founder of Bookmovement.com noted that the quick jump of Khaled Hosseini's And the Mountains Echoed, published May 21, onto the list followed an unusual trajectory: "Book clubs adopted the book in advance of publication, which is virtually unprecedented and very unusual for book clubs. They will usually wait for the book reviews or to see what other clubs thought. In this case, the clubs scheduled the book before the book even came out."

[Many thanks to Bookmovement.com!]