While this year has brought more challenges, it also gave us some truly beautiful children's and young adult titles. Here are our top picks for 2021; click here to read our reviews of these excellent books. (Shelf Awareness's Best Adult Books will be announced November 30.)

Children's
The Midnight Fair by Gideon Sterer, illus. by Mariachiara Di Giorgio (Candlewick)
I Sang You Down from the Stars by Tasha Spillett-Sumner, illus. by Michaela Goade (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Milo Imagines the World by Matt de la Peña, illus. by Christian Robinson (Putnam Books for Young Readers)
It Fell from the Sky by Terry Fan and Eric Fan (Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers)
Strollercoaster by Matt Ringler, illus. by Raúl the Third and Elaine Bay (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Outside, Inside by LeUyen Pham (Roaring Brook Press)
The Me I Choose to Be by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley, photographs by Regis and Kahran Bethencourt (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers)
Too Small Tola by Atinuke, illus. by Onyinye Iwu (Candlewick)
Watercress by Andrea Wang, illus. by Jason Chin (Neal Porter Books/Holiday House)
Egg Marks the Spot: A Skunk and Badger Story by Amy Timberlake, illus. by Jon Klassen (Algonquin Young Readers)
The Genius Under the Table: Growing Up Behind the Iron Curtain by Eugene Yelchin (Candlewick)
Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories for Kids, edited by Cynthia L. Smith (Heartdrum/HarperCollins)
The Little Wooden Robot and the Log Princess by Tom Gauld (Neal Porter/Holiday House)
Gone to the Woods by Gary Paulsen (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
Fallout: Spies, Superbombs, and the Ultimate Cold War Showdown by Steve Sheinkin (Roaring Brook Press)

Young Adult
Me (Moth) by Amber McBride (Feiwel & Friends)
Winterkeep by Kristin Cashore (Dial Books)
The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore (Feiwel & Friends)
A Sitting in St. James by Rita Williams-Garcia (Quill Tree Books)
Pumpkin by Julie Murphy (Balzer + Bray)

"The best part of it has been seeing how the community has shaped the bookstore," said Megan Murai, co-owner of Timbre Books in Ventura, Calif. 

She and her husband, Kyle Murai, opened the 1,200-square-foot store in downtown Ventura in October 2020. While the general-interest, all-ages bookstore sells a "little bit of everything," adult fiction is the store's single biggest section and there is a robust selection of children's titles. Timbre Books sells new books, along with an assortment of gift items like candles, journals and greeting cards.

The store held its first in-person author event on Saturday, with Karen Grassle, who played Caroline Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie, reading from her new book, Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House's Ma. Prior to Saturday's event, Timbre Books had held virtual events, including a "really wonderful" event with Obi Kaufman, author of The California Field Atlas, and book club meetings, with customers able to attend virtually or in-person. Looking ahead, Murai hopes to gradually grow the store's event offerings while still keeping customers safe.

Owners Megan and Kyle Murai

Reflecting on how the inventory has changed since the store had its grand opening last year, Murai said she'd underestimated the demand for books about the environment and natural history. Customers and community members are "really interested in learning about local lands," which in retrospect "isn't that surprising knowing Ventura."

Prior to opening Timbre Books, neither Murai nor her husband had any experience in bookselling. Opening a bookstore of her own had always been a dream, but it was something that she'd imagined would happen later on in life. Early in the pandemic, however, Murai and her husband were getting coffee from their favorite local coffee shop and started talking about how great an adjacent storefront would be for a bookstore.

At the time, Murai was doing some freelance work while also working at a brewery in town, and was trying to "figure out what I wanted to do next because of the pandemic." The storefront they liked had been vacant for over a year, and they decided "maybe we should just look into it." Once they started researching the process, things quickly "snowballed" from there.

When it came to learning the ropes of the bookselling business, Murai joined the ABA and made use of the myriad resources for new stores. She joined forums with other booksellers, messaged other booksellers on social media, did plenty of "random Google searches" and gradually compiled information.

Building the store's opening inventory, she recalled, was something of a collaborative process. Murai holds an MFA in creative writing, with fiction and literature being her specialty. For the store's poetry and creative nonfiction sections, Murai turned to friends she met in grad school who studied those subjects, and for the children's section Murai asked for help from a friend who is a librarian. Beyond that, she asked community members and friends what they'd like to see.

Almost right from the start, the community's response was "far beyond what we expected," Murai said. Shortly before the store opened, Murai and her husband did a final fundraising push. They would have been able to open the store without it, she explained, but felt they could make the store even better with those extra funds. They were blown away by how many people in the community were willing to donate and rally around the store.

"We've had really great community support," Murai said, adding that it's come from both individuals as well as other local businesses. "There's been an outpouring of people saying they're grateful we're here." --Alex Mutter

Earlier this month, Cassie and James Adair opened Small Town Books in Rusk, Tex., the Tyler Morning Telegraph reported.

Small Town Books sells new and used books along with home-schooling curriculum, educational games and toys, teacher supplies and Christian novelty items. The store buys back some things, including home-school items and novels, and has a refreshment area.

The store has a large display window which the Adairs plan to use to showcase works from local artists. This coming Saturday, November 27, the store is hosting a book-signing event with local author John Alexander. On December 18, it will have an event with Santa Claus and hot chocolate.

"I love books and have a passion for reading. Books are for all people, all ages and all interests," Cassie Adair told the newspaper, which added that the Adairs had been "thinking more and more about opening a bookstore the past few years. We hope the bookstore will bring imagination and adventures for all ages and influences the love of reading and literacy in the community."

Total net book sales in September in the U.S. rose 2%, to $1.7 billion, compared to September 2020, representing sales of 1,368 publishers and distributed clients as reported to the Association of American Publishers. September 2020 was the sixth full month reflecting lockdowns in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. For the year to date, total net sales rose 12.4%, to $11.63 billion.

Trade sales in September rose 0.3%, to $938.5 million. Trade sales of traditional books were mixed in September: hardcovers were down 4.4%, to $398.9 million, paperbacks jumped 10.5%, to $298.7 million, mass market fell 20.1%, to $16.6 million, and board books were up 0.4%, to $23.7 million. E-book sales fell 10.8%, to $90.4 million.

Sales by category in September 2021 compared to September 2020:

The Canadian Independent Booksellers Association shared a link to a recent Toronto Star article headlined: " 'A backlist Christmas': Booksellers fear stockouts amid supply chain woes."

CIBA noted: "To those book lovers and gift buyers who have taken our 'shop early' advice to heart: thank you! And for those who haven't started yet: It's officially time! The supply chain disruptions we anticipated have become a reality.... Indie bookstores are doing everything they can to minimize the impacts, but they need your help. Shop early, be flexible, and don't hesitate to rely on them for expert recommendations!"

Chris Hall, CIBA president and co-owner of McNally Robinson, which has locations in Winnipeg and Saskatoon, told the Star that many sellers decided to stock up early this year rather than risk running out of the must-read of the season. Although his worst fears hadn't materialized yet, the stores are even busier than usual, and he remains on "high alert" for stock shortages.

"We are going to have a store full of good books right through the Christmas season," he said. "There'll just be some titles that may not be available."

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Rasha al Ameer

The International Publishers Association's freedom to publish committee has selected Lebanese publishing house Dar Al Jadeed to receive the 2021 IPA Prix Voltaire. The publisher was co-founded in Beirut in 2000 by Lokman Slim and his sister, Rasha al Ameer, to publish cultural works free from ideological conflict or partisanship. In February 2021, Lokman Slim was murdered after a campaign of threats and intimidation over his efforts to bring greater freedom of expression and open dialogue to Lebanon. Rasha Al Ameer will receive the Prix Voltaire in person November 30 at the Guadalajara International Book Fair.

IPA president Bodour Al Qasimi said: "Through the Prix Voltaire, the International Publishers Association stands with individuals and organizations which share our commitment and devotion to freedom to publish as a fundamental right. Publishers, and our colleagues throughout the publishing value chain, need to know that they have the collective support of the entire industry behind them when they face unjust persecution and censorship. This year's Prix Voltaire laureate paid the ultimate price standing up for freedom of expression as an enabler of tolerance and conflict resolution in Lebanon. His loss is a loss to the entire international publishing community."

Kristenn Einarsson, chair of the IPA's freedom to publish committee, added: "Dar Al Jadeed has experienced first-hand the dangers that can come with a commitment to freedom of expression and the free communication of ideas. Their bravery is an inspiration."

The IPA has also announced a Special Award for Chinese author Li Liqun (pen name Li Huizi), an Independent Chinese PEN Center member who took his own life on July 23, 2021. Einarsson said the committee "only gives a Prix Voltaire Special Award for cases we feel are particularly noteworthy. Li Liqun's efforts as a writer, political commentator and public intellectual were widely respected. The committee is proud to recognize his work for freedom of expression."

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Middle East Eye featured "City of a thousand booksellers: Eight of the oldest places to buy books in Cairo," noting that the Egyptian capital's "literary history is long and complex, with many bookshops launched as accompaniments to the country and the region's first publishing houses. Dar El Maaref, for instance, is the oldest Egyptian publishing house, established in 1890, with the first branch of its bookshops opening in 1910, and still standing today in Ramses. 

"A search for the city's oldest bookshops makes for quite the urban adventure.... It's an eye-opening walking tour, made a little easier by the fact that in Cairo's older neighborhoods, independent shops of the same kind are usually huddled together.... The following are some of the city's oldest, iconic bookshops, where you can hold an 18th century edition of Voltaire in your hands, retrace the literary salons of Naguib Mahfouz and Taha Hussein, comb through rare vintage prints, and have the books you've picked up leather-bound at one of the city's last surviving bookbinders." --Robert Gray

Robert Bly

Robert Bly, the Minnesota poet, author and translator "who articulated the solitude of landscapes, galvanized protests against the Vietnam War and started a controversial men's movement with a bestseller that called for a restoration of primal male audacity," died November 21, the New York Times reported. He was 94. Bly's work included more than 50 books of poetry, translations of European and Latin American writers, and nonfiction commentaries on literature, gender roles and social ills, as well as poetry magazines he edited for decades.

In 1966, Bly co-founded American Writers Against the Vietnam War and toured the country, rallying the opposition with poetry "read-ins" on campuses and in town halls. He won the National Book Award for poetry for The Light Around the Body (1967), and donated his $1,000 prize to the draft resistance.

"Taking another abrupt turn in 1990, he published what was to become his most famous work, Iron John: A Book About Men, which drew on myths, legends, poetry and science of a sort to make a case that American men had grown soft and feminized and needed to rediscover their primitive virtues of ferocity and audacity and thus regain the self-confidence to be nurturing fathers and mentors," the Times wrote. The book was on the Times's bestseller list for 62 weeks, including 10 weeks at number one, and was translated into many languages.

Among the many media profiles of him was a 90-minute PBS special by Bill Moyers, who called Bly "arguably the most influential poet writing today." During the 1970s, he wrote 11 books of poetry, essays and translations. In the '80s and '90s, he produced 27 books, including The Man in the Black Coat Turns (1981), Loving a Woman in Two Worlds (1985) and Selected Poems (1986). His most recent book was Robert Bly: Collected Poems (2018).

"In recent years, he traveled widely, lecturing, reading poems and joining discussion panels, and in 2008 he was named Minnesota's first poet laureate by Gov. Tim Pawlenty," the Times noted. In 2004, he published The Insanity of Empire: A Book of Poems Against the War in Iraq, and in an introduction noted wryly that little had changed since Vietnam. "We are still in a blindfold," he wrote, "still being led by the wise of this world."

The Star Tribune noted that "in his heyday, Bly was known for making theater of poetry readings--reading poems twice, or three times, just because he loved their sound; reading other writers' work; wearing a rubber fright mask or an embroidered vest on stage; reading to the background music of drums and sitars. But despite his theatrics, he was always intensely serious about poetry and its importance in the cultural and political landscape. He was besotted by words."

In addition to the National Book Award, his many honors include the 2013 Robert Frost Medal, the Transtromer Poetry Prize in Sweden, and Guggenheim, Rockefeller and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships; and a McKnight Distinguished Artist Award in 2000.

"His last public reading was April 13, 2015, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis where he launched the collection, Like the New Moon, I Will Live My Life," the Star Tribune noted. "One by one, 24 poets read their favorite Bly poems before Bly himself stood and read 'Moon Behind a Cottonwood Tree,' 'Arriving in the North Woods,' and the poem that had become his late-in-life anthem, 'Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat,' about survival, grace, and death. He thumped his cane on the wooden floor of the church in time with the words.... After that, he occasionally attended readings, sometimes leaving before they were over, but he did not read in public again." 

From "Keeping Our Small Boat Afloat":

It's hard to grasp how much generosity
Is involved in letting us go on breathing,
When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.

Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for
Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat
When so many have gone down in the storm.

On Sunday, November 21, Warwick's in La Jolla, Calif., hosted an open house celebration in honor of its 125th anniversary. Visitors enjoyed live music, giveaways (including $125 Warwick's gift cards), book recommendations from authors and publishers, and a champagne toast at 1:25 p.m. Ten percent of sales on the 21st were donated to the San Diego Humane Society. Pictured: (l.-r.) Julie Slavinsky, director of events at Warwick's; Kristin Rasmussen, co-executive director of the California Booksellers Alliance (CALIBA); and Random House rep Tom Benton.

Lion's Mouth Bookstore, Green Bay, Wis., shared pics of the shop's new front window art, noting: "The talent @aaron.renier is here today painting a snowy winter scene for us and we are so excited! AARON RENIER is the author of three graphic novels for younger readers: Spiral-Bound, Walker Bean, and Walker Bean and the Knights of the Waxing Moon. He is the recipient of the Eisner award in 2006 for talent deserving of wider recognition, and was an inaugural resident for the Sendak Fellowship in 2010. He taught drawing and comics at universities in Chicago and now lives and works back home in Green Bay...."

Stephanie Beard has joined Sourcebooks as associate director of rights and international sales. She was previously executive editor and subsidiary rights director at Turner Publishing.

The Bloodless Boy by Robert Lloyd (Melville House), a video produced by the Mooresville (Ind.) Public Library.

Tomorrow:
CBS This Morning: Lisa Damour, author of Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls (Ballantine, $17, 9780399180071).

Good Morning America: Jessica Seinfeld, author of Vegan, at Times: 120+ Recipes for Every Day or Every So Often (Gallery Books, $29.99, 9781982149574).

Tamron Hall: Carla Hall, author of Carla and the Christmas Cornbread (Denene Millner Books/Simon & Schuster, $17.99, 9781534494695).

Treasure Entertainment and actress Katheryn Winnick's (Big Sky) Kat Scratch Inc. have optioned the rights to Liz Nugent's 2016 novel Lying in Wait and will develop it into a mini-series. Deadline reported that the project is being produced by Treasure Entertainment's Rebecca O'Flanagan and Robert Walpole, as well as Winnick. Irish writer David Turpin (The Lodgers, The Winter Lake) will develop the series.  

"I am so particularly delighted that Lying in Wait will be produced by my old friends at Treasure Entertainment, a company whose work I have long admired," Nugent said. "I'm also thrilled that a luminary of the caliber of Katheryn Winnick will direct. I am looking forward to working with such a dynamic and hard-working team. My mind is racing with the possibilities of how, together, we might bring this modern Gothic story to life on screen."

O'Flanagan added: "We are thrilled to have secured the option on Liz Nugent's book Lying in Wait. We are massive fans of Liz's work and believe that it is ripe for adaptation. We are so looking forward to powering forward with this and working with Katheryn in bringing these fascinating characters and story to the screen."

Winnick commented: "I was captivated by the interesting and dynamic characters Liz Nugent created in Lying in Wait. I couldn't put the book down. I knew it was something I needed to be a part of the second I finished reading it."

Astra Publishing House named the winners of the Astra International Picture Book Writing Contest, a worldwide competition for picture book writing; and the Golden Pinwheel Astra Award, connecting talented young illustrators with award-winning storytellers.

Yun Dai (China) was the Gold Prize winner of the Astra International Picture Book Writing Contest for the manuscript Sherjahaan, and will receive $10,000 and the opportunity to sign a publishing contract for publication of the manuscript in one or more languages. Three Silver Prize winners received $5,000 each; and 20 Finalist Prize winners $1,000 each.

Yuliya Gwilym (Ukraine, currently living in the Hague, the Netherlands) won the Golden Pinwheel Astra Award and will receive $5,000 and the opportunity to sign a publishing contract with Thinkingdom Media Group to illustrate one of the winning manuscripts from the Astra International Picture Book Writing Contest.

What a production! Isaac Butler has packed The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act, his essential history of America's hallmark acting style, with tales of political intrigue, stories of stratospheric triumphs and epic failures, and scenes of backstabbing and petulance played out by--and this should go without saying--a first-rate cast.

Before the Method, an acting performance wasn't evaluated in terms of how "true" it felt. As Butler tells it, the seeds of change were planted in Russia in 1897 during a meeting between playwright and acting teacher Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and theater director and actor Konstantin Stanislavski, the visionary of the two and namesake of the future acting technique. The pair spent what turned into an 18-hour lunch "plotting a theatrical revolution": disappointed with the performances they were seeing onstage, they decided to start a theater company devoted to teaching actors to work toward a more naturalistic style.

When New Yorker and theater devotee Harold Clurman was visiting Paris in 1922, he was bowled over by a touring production of The Cherry Orchard put on by Nemirovich and Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre. Without realizing it, Clurman "had found his purpose," Butler writes. "In a few years, he would study the Moscow Art Theatre's techniques, and help dream a new era of American theater into being." With Lee Strasberg and Cheryl Crawford, Clurman founded the Group Theatre in New York in 1931, attracting a roster of formidable teachers, among them the legends Stella Adler and Elia Kazan. Disagreements could turn so fiery that some instructors stormed off to teach elsewhere, but each remained committed to steering actors toward a more true-to-life style that would become, in Butler's words, "a transformative, revolutionary, modernist art movement, one of the Big Ideas of the twentieth century."

There were Big Egos to match. Butler, who coauthored The World Only Spins Forward: The Ascent of Angels in America, doesn't skimp on the backstage dramas of the technique's best-known practitioners. The actors featured in The Method--among them John Garfield, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Kim Stanley and Marilyn Monroe--call to mind siblings bent on supporting and undermining one another in equal measure. Brando, for one, "responded to Dean's entreaties for advice with a recommendation that the younger man see an analyst." Too bad Dean couldn't have sought advice from Butler: his book amounts to a print-form master class in the Method. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer

Shelf Talker: This comprehensive history of the great American acting style is the present and likely future standard-bearer for books on the subject.

Ellen Stimson, author of Mud Season and Good Grief, has spent most of her life in and around the book industry. Before she started writing her own books, she owned the first female-owned book wholesaling company so she has always understood the importance of booksellers. She is blessed with a wild pack of mostly grown children, not-so-wild but completely adorable husband, and a very civilized group of chickens, dogs and cats. She writes about the whole catastrophe from an old farmhouse in Vermont. And she plans to write occasionally for Shelf Awareness about some of her favorite books: backlist.

Ordering from gardening catalogs was a balm during the first long winter of Covid. I wanted lots of color come spring and butterflies come summer. Something I read about those much-desired butterflies during that frenzy of shopping stuck with me. If a butterfly comes out of its chrysalis too soon, it will not be able to fly. It will look like a butterfly in every way. It will actually be a butterfly, albeit one who cannot fly (which sort of defeats the whole point of butterflying). That resonated with me, especially as we all emerge from our pandemic chrysalis, many of us faster, but more of us slower than we expected. There seems to be some internal clock that needs tending, and that was even before the Delta variant came along.

Will it be another winter of comfort shopping, comfort foods, and, best of all, comfort reading? Rereading is likely the most comforting kind of reading there is. You know exactly what you are going to get with an old favorite author: you will likely be pleased again by the gorgeous geography, clever dialogue, relentless pacing... whatever drew you to the book the first time. Can booksellers highlight backlist titles just like new ones? Is it smart to offer bookseller recommendations for the backlist? Can the backlist be just as seasonal as any holiday list? I think so.

Michael Malone, remember him? There is practically nothin' better than a fall road trip with Michael. The geniuses at Sourcebooks repackaged them all a while ago so they are, first of all, beautiful to look at, but also hilarious as always. Dingley Falls is a character-driven romp. Quirky characters, bawdy nights and clever dialogue make for a pretty good way to ride out a stormy weekend. It's a long but fast 400 pages with a necessary four-page alphabetical listing of all the characters: Sidney Blossom, town librarian and former hippie; Louie Daytona, gorgeous bisexual sculptor and ex-convict. I mean, come on! Handling Sin, Foolscap and Time's Witness would be terrific for a series of chilly fall weekends.

Jan Karon's Mitford series is filled with characters who treat one another with kindness, dignity, and respect. Remember those? Yeah, me neither, which is why these books are such a balm, especially during election season. The first two, At Home in Mitford and A Light in the Window, were originally released by Penguin in paper but then Karon became such a phenomenon that the Mitford books became an annual big-budget treat for millions of readers. That success story maybe made us forget about the novelty and sweetness of the first two. You'll meet a dozen or so small-town characters who will remind you of your own favorite locals. These are the people we missed most during our Covid lockdown, and Mitford will bring them right back. These first Mitford books were quiet and wise, and it's time to introduce a new generation of readers to them this fall.

Let us not forget Richard Russo, who doesn't need me to sell him but does need you. Because like all great authors, he relies on booksellers to put his books into the hands of new readers. Mohawk and Risk Pool were where it all began at Vintage. He wrote these before Empire Falls, which was when he really got going but these were perfect little gems. As you all know, he writes about blue-collar New Englanders whose American dreams have gone bad. They are down on their luck and still somehow they manage to make us and each other laugh even as they rage about income disparity long before anyone had coined the term. Russo is brilliant. Now we simply must introduce him to this whole new generation of AOC and Bernie supporters.

That reminds me. The original Pam Houston--Cowboys Are My Weakness--is a series of short stories with the interconnected themes of bad men, good country, and brave women. On the wild rivers of Colorado or deep in the rugged alpines of Alaska, our ballsy narrator falls for cowboys who are never worth the trip. Luckily she tells the stories with a sure and gutsy voice so we can bear them too. Houston's lyrical descriptions of the natural world are just right for autumn when nature lifts its skirts. So you can add in Waltzing the Cat and A Little More About Me, all from Norton. But the original, more than a quarter of a century old, was ahead of its time. It could have been written this year for the Me Too era and we need to be putting this book into young women's hands every day. Come election season they might just be ready.

The bestselling self-published books last week as compiled by IndieReader.com:

1. Snowed Inn for Christmas by Various
2. Shakedown Souls (Chapel Revenants MC Book 8) by Lani Lynn Vale
3. Adaptable by A.J. Juliani
4. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter
5. A Good Soul by Tricia O'Malley
6. Success Mindsets by Various
7. This Is: Books 1-4 by Natasha Madison
8. Killing Me Softly by Various
9. Bad Cruz by L.J. Shen
10. A Not So Meet Cute by Meghan Quinn

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]