Carmichael's Bookstore, Louisville, Ky., is expanding its general store at 1295 Bardstown Road, adding 750 square feet of space, WDRB reported. The space had been occupied by Heine Brothers Coffee, which has moved across the street.

Carmichael's also has a children's bookstore, Carmichael's Kids, at 1313 Bardstown Road, which opened in 2014. Its other general bookstore is at 2720 Frankfort Avenue.

At Children's Institute 6 in New Orleans, La., last week, author Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give and the forthcoming On the Come Up, Harper) delivered a charming and passionate final keynote. "I'm here," Thomas said, "to beg you to change our world." Acknowledging that this was a big ask, Thomas went on to explain how important gatekeepers had been in her life and in her journey to being an author. She told the story of her first-grade teacher ("Mrs. First"), whom Thomas overheard complaining to a coworker that educating black youth was a waste of time. In contrast, her third-grade teacher ("Mrs. Third") saw Thomas's love of writing and nurtured it. Both teachers were white, both teachers saw her blackness and both teachers made her want to be her best self, except one galvanized and one encouraged. What kind of gatekeeper, she asked the crowd, are you? What kind of gatekeeper do you want to be? "Do you know who you're providing books to?"

This, she said, is how booksellers can change the world. This work develops minds, hearts and souls: "I foolishly believe that through books and through these children that we serve we can change the world. I have to--I absolutely have to believe that if some of our current political leaders read about black people as children, we wouldn't have to say 'black lives matter.' If they read about Latino children, we wouldn't have these kids being thrown in cages--they wouldn't want to build walls but bridges. If they read about GLBTQIA youth, we wouldn't have to fight for rights. And if they read books about Muslim children, we wouldn't have to fight bans. So, booksellers, do you see how important your work is?" --Siân Gaetano

Andrew Smith (senior v-p and publisher, Abrams children's books), Chrystal Carr Jeter (children's services specialist, Willoughby, Ohio) and author/illustrator Bryan Collier at the Coretta Scott King Award breakfast banquet.

With more than 20,000 librarians in attendance, the convention floor of the American Library Association's annual conference, in New Orleans, La., officially opened on the evening of June 22, following an afternoon conversation between former First Lady Michelle Obama (Becoming, available from Crown November 13) and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. (During the conversation, Obama gave a shoutout to 57th Street Books, Chicago, Ill., a video of which the store shared on Facebook.) Before the former First Lady took the stage, New Orleans local Troy "Trombone Shorty" Andrews and a band of talented children from his Trombone Shorty Foundation entertained the crowd. Mayor LaToya Cantrell followed, welcoming the almost 10,000 librarians in the room and reminding them that ALA was the first convention held in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Michelle Obama and Carla Hayden

On Saturday, June 23, the board of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) announced that, after a long and comprehensive review, it had unanimously voted to change the name of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award (which "honors an author or illustrator whose books... have made... a significant and lasting contribution to children's literature") to the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

Author/illustrator Bryan Collier and Lisa Moraleda (publicity director, Simon & Schuster) at the Caldecott/Newbery/Legacy Award dinner

At the Caldecott, Newbery and Children's Literature Legacy Award banquet the next evening, ALSC President Nina Lindsay said the new name would "more precisely acknowledge the respect" conferred upon the winners, whose books "demonstrate integrity and respect for all children's lives and experiences." Lindsay went on to "humbly apologize" to those in the community who had sat "uncomfortably" as awards were announced in Wilder's name, whose "legacy, as represented by her body of work, includes expressions of stereotypical attitudes inconsistent with ALSC's core values of inclusiveness, integrity and respect, and responsiveness." Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming, Nancy Paulsen Books), the 2018 recipient of the award, referred to this change in her speech (written just that afternoon): "While I am deeply honored to be on this stage... I stand here reminded of writing's complicated journey. How it continues to reveal us. How it continues to reveal ourselves to us. How it shows us our grace.... My hope is that it continues to remind us of the work ahead and the people we're doing the work for: the future generations." ALA concludes tomorrow. --Siân Gaetano

Barnes & Noble is creating its first dedicated graphic novel sections for readers ages 7-12. The sections will feature more than 250 titles, including popular series such as Amulet, Wings of Fire and Nathan Hale's Hazardous Tales. The sections will include graphic novels in fiction, fantasy & adventure, history, and science.

"Readership of graphic novels continues to grow and expand, with kids flocking to this popular genre," said Stephanie Fryling, B&N's v-p of merchandising, children's books. "Graphic novels are a way for kids to appreciate both reading and art, and the breadth of talent for both authors and illustrators in this category is amazing."

Tim Jarvis

Tim Jarvis from Fullers Bookshop in Hobart, Tasmania, was named Young Bookseller of the Year and Chris Redfern from Avenue Bookstore in Melbourne took the Bookseller of the Year honor during the Australian Booksellers Association 2018 conference in Canberra, Books+Publishing reported. Sarah Rakich of Beaufort Street Books in Perth was awarded the Elizabeth Riley Fellowship for Children's Bookselling, which she will use to attend the American Booksellers Association's ABC Children's Institute in 2019.

Jarvis was one of five Young Bookseller of the Year finalists interviewed earlier this month by Books+Publishing. The other finalists were Stephanie Beck of Better Read Than Dead in Newtown, Sydney; Dani Solomon of Readings Kids in Melbourne; Annie Waters from Mostly Books in Torrens Park; and Kate Frawley of the Sun and Younger Sun bookshops in Yarraville.

Mike Symons

Mike Symons, CEO of Parragon, has left the company as it prepares for closure, "with only 19 of 140 employees still working at the U.K. site in Bath," the Bookseller reported. Parragon's "annuals business will continue on as part of the wider DC Thomson Group, with Cottage Door Press taking on the publisher's titles in North and South America and Lake Press buying rights to others in Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong."

In a related development, the Bookseller noted that a U.S. newspaper, the Milan Mirror-Exchange, reported that the FBI is involved in investigating "criminal activities" at a former Parragon warehouse in Milan, Tenn. Parragon declined to comment on "personal matters" and the FBI also refused to comment. The investigation is said to be "ongoing."

A DC Thomson spokesperson told the Bookseller that the Milan "warehouse facility has successfully transferred to ABC, the American Book Company. ABC is using the facility with its established infrastructure to supplement its already substantial warehouse and distribution operations at Knoxville, Tennessee. We would not publicly comment on any other personnel matters in Milan."

Donald Hall, "a giant of American poetry," died June 23 at Eagle Pond Farm in Wilmot, N.H., "where he hayed with his grandfather during boyhood summers and later cultivated a writer's life," the Concord Monitor reported. He was 89. Hall was "a literary dynamo, writing poetry, memoir, criticism, magazine articles, plays, short stories and children's books." In addition to winning numerous awards and honors, Hall was appointed U.S. poet laureate in 2006 by President George W. Bush. President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal of the Arts in 2010.

He wrote almost to the end of a career that spanned more than 60 years, beginning with the publication at 26 of his poetry collection Exiles and Marriages and continuing through his Essays after Eighty (2014) and soon-to-be-published A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety. His last poetry collection, The Selected Poems of Donald Hall, was released in 2015.

In 1972, five years after a divorce, Hall married Jane Kenyon, his former student at the University of Michigan. They eventually moved to the New Hampshire farm his family had owned for a century, a decision that "transformed his poetry," beginning with Kicking the Leaves (1978), as well as his life, the Monitor noted, adding that the "Hall-Kenyon literary household peaked in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Kenyon wrote two popular collections--Let Evening Come in 1990 and Constance in 1993. Hall turned his poem 'The Ox-Cart Man' into a children's book that sold well for years. His book-length poem, The One Day, won the National Book Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer."

After Kenyon's leukemia diagnosis in 1993 and death at 47 in 1995, Hall's "grief ran long and deep," the Monitor wrote. He shepherded her book Otherwise to publication, appeared at events celebrating her life and work, and wrote poems (Without, 1999; The Painted Bed, 2003) and a memoir (The Best Day the Worst Day: Life with Jane Kenyon, 2006) about losing her. "Twenty years later, he still teared up talking about her," the Monitor noted.

"One does write, indeed, to be loved," Hall told the Boston Globe in 1985. "Fame is another word for love, an impersonal word for love. One wants people 200 years from now to love your poetry. The great pleasure of being a writer is in the act of writing, and surely there is some pleasure in being published and being praised. I don't mean to be complacent about what I have some of. But the greater pleasure is in the act. When you lose yourself in your work, and you feel at one with it, it is like love."

In 2012, he announced that his poetry-writing days were over, and in a New Yorker essay, "Out the Window," he observed: "New poems no longer come to me, with their prodigies of metaphor and assonance. Prose endures. I feel the circles grow smaller, and old age is a ceremony of losses, which is on the whole preferable to dying at forty-seven or fifty-two. When I lament and darken over my diminishments, I accomplish nothing. It's better to sit at the window all day, pleased to watch birds, barns, and flowers. It is a pleasure to write about what I do."

From his poem "Affirmation":

Let us stifle under mud at the pond's edge
and affirm that it is fitting
and delicious to lose everything.

Village Lights Bookstore, Madison, Ind., shared a photo of its recent sidewalk sandwich board creation, which says: "Real Books. Real People. Algorithm Free & Human Intelligence Driven."

Effective late this fall, Four Way Books, New York City, will be distributed by Chicago Distribution Center, the distribution services division of the University of Chicago Press.

Four Way Books has been distributed for nearly 20 years by the University Press of New England, the publishing consortium of colleges and universities that has been a distributor for at least 15 small- and medium-sized pressed and is being closed by Dartmouth College.

Bruce Lee: A Life by Matthew Polly (Simon & Schuster), in which Polly recounts how Lee's film Enter the Dragon launched a kung fu craze across the U.S.

Today:
CBS This Morning: Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams (Scribner, $17, 9781501144325).

Fresh Air: Mona Hanna-Attisha, author of What the Eyes Don't See: A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City (One World, $28, 9780399590832).

Harry repeat: Iyanla Vanzant, author of Get Over It!: Thought Therapy for Healing the Hard Stuff (Hay House, $24, 9781401944018).

Daily Show: James Prince, author of The Art & Science of Respect: A Memoir (N-The-Water Publishing, $29.99, 9780999837009).

Tonight Show: Rupi Kaur, author of The Sun and Her Flowers (Andrews McMeel, $13.38, 9781449486792).

Tomorrow:
Today Show: Mark Bittman, author of How to Grill Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Flame-Cooked Food (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30, 9780544790308).

The View: Jon Meacham, author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels (Random House, $30, 9780399589812).

Daily Show: Bill Clinton and James Patterson, authors of The President Is Missing: A Novel (Little, Brown/Knopf, $30, 9780316412698).

Late Night with Seth Meyers: Stacey Abrams, author of Minority Leader: How to Lead from the Outside and Make Real Change (Holt, $28, 9781250191298).

Laura Dern is developing an hourlong series based on Juliet McDaniel's debut novel, Mr. & Mrs. American Pie. Deadline reported that this is Dern's first project since she and her producing partner, Jayme Lemons, through their production company Jaywalker Pictures, signed a first-look TV deal with Platform One Media.

McDaniel will write the adaptation and executive produce with Dern, Lemons, Elisa Ellis of Platform One and Adam Gomolin, founder of Inkshares, the book publisher and rights-management company that optioned the rights to the novel to Platform One Media.

"As an award-winning actress, talented producer, and articulate creative visionary, Laura Dern is well-respected for her artistry and activism in Hollywood and around the world. We look forward to working with Jaywalker Pictures to develop compelling stories and necessary narratives for television that resonate with audiences around the globe," said Platform Media CEO Katie O'Connell Marsh.

Dern added: "Jayme and I ... feel so inspired by the passion Katie O'Connell and her amazing team brings to every creative conversation."

Not One Day by Anne Garréta, translated by Emma Ramadan (Deep Vellum) has won the $10,000 2018 Albertine Prize, which is co-presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Van Cleef & Arpels to recognize "American readers' favorite French-language fiction title that has been translated into English and distributed in the U.S. within the preceding calendar year."

Prize organizers said that in Not One Day, "Anne Garréta unfolds twelve gripping vignettes about her experiences with desire. The book holds intimate and erotic anecdotes (along with melancholy and reflective ones), however, as Emma Ramadan, the book's translator, points out, 'when viewed through the prism of memory, desire in this book turns into something raw and emotional rather than physical.' "