The American Booksellers Association board of directors will have three new officers this spring, with two-year terms, following the board's approval of the nominating committee's recommendations, as reported by Bookselling This Week.

Tegan Tigani of Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, Wash., will become president. She has been the children's book buyer since the store opened 10 years ago, and was a bookseller and kids' buyer at the predecessor bookstore, Queen Anne Books; an editor-at-large for Little Bigfoot, Sasquatch Books' children's imprint; and has been president of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, among other positions. She has been on the ABA board since 2019.

Tegan Tigani

Cynthia Compton of 4 Kids Books & Toys, Zionsville, Ind., and MacArthur Books, Carmel, Ind., will be vice-president/secretary. She opened 4 Kids in 2003, and has served as president of the Great Lakes Booksellers Association, on the Booksellers Advisory Council, the ABC Advisory Panel and the ABA nominating committee as well as the board of the American Specialty Toy Association. She opened MacArthur Books, a general bookstore, in 2022.

Jenny Cohen of Waucoma Bookstore, Hood River, Ore., will be vice-president. She and her husband, Muir, have owned the store since 2008. She is a former member of the ABA Booksellers Advisory Council, a former board member of Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, and a past PNBA Book Awards Committee member.

Among current officers, the board term of president Christine Onorati of WORD Bookstores, Brooklyn, N.Y., and Jersey City, N.J., ends this year. Co-vice president/secretary Angela Maria Spring of Duende District Books, Washington, D.C., and Albuquerque, N.Mex., is resigning a year before her term ends to focus on family and creative projects. In addition, board member Melanie Knight of Books, Inc., San Francisco, Calif., is leaving the book industry, and there is a vacant seat.

Recommended to stand for election to three-year terms (2023–2026) are:

Holly Weinkauf, owner of Red Balloon Bookshop, St. Paul, Minn.
Lisa Swayze, general manager and buyer, Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, N.Y.
Jessica Stockton Bagnulo, owner of Greenlight Bookstores, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Directors on the current board up for re-election are:

Tegan Tigani of Queen Anne Book Company, Seattle, Wash.
Diane Capriola, Little Shop of Stories, Decatur, Ga.

A ballot for the 2023 board elections will be sent to ABA members via e-mail the week of March 1, at least 60 days prior to the annual membership meeting, which is scheduled for May 25. The deadline for return of the ballots is 11:59 p.m. Eastern on April 5.

The ballot will include space for write-in candidates, but any bookstore member may submit petitions to have the names of additional candidates for board officers or directors added to the ballot. For rules about how to petition for candidates, which should be completed by February 12, see details in Bookselling This Week.

In November, bookstore sales rose 0.5%, to $668 million, compared to November 2021, according to preliminary Census Bureau estimates. By comparison to pre-pandemic times, bookstore sales in November were 7.2% higher than in November 2019. For the year to date, sales have risen 6.8%, to $7.84 billion compared to the first 11 months of 2021.

Total retail sales in November rose 6.2%, to $695 billion, compared to November 2021. For the year to date, total retail sales have climbed 9.6%, to $7,373 billion.

Note: under Census Bureau definitions, the bookstore category consists of "establishments primarily engaged in retailing new books." The Bureau also added this unusual caution concerning the effect of Covid-19: "The Census Bureau continues to monitor response and data quality and has determined that estimates in this release meet publication standards."

Meg Medina

Meg Medina has been named National Ambassador for Young People's Literature for 2023-2024. The Library of Congress and Every Child a Reader made the announcement yesterday, noting that Medina, who is Cuban American, is the first Latina to serve in the role in the program's history. She succeeds Jason Reynolds.

Medina's books examine how culture and identity intersect through the eyes of young people. Her middle-grade novel Merci Suárez Changes Gears, the first of three books in a trilogy (with Merci Suárez Can't Dance and Merci Suárez Plays It Cool), received the 2019 Newbery Medal. Her most recent picture book, Evelyn Del Rey Is Moving Away, illustrated by Sonia Sánchez, earned multiple honors, including the 2021-2022 Charlotte Zolotow Award. Her other titles include Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, which won the 2014 Pura Belpré Author Award and will be published in 2023 as a graphic novel illustrated by Mel Valentine Vargas; Burn Baby Burn, which was longlisted for the National Book Award; The Girl Who Could Silence the Wind; Mango, Abuela and Me, illustrated by Angela Dominguez; Tía Isa Wants a Car, illustrated by Claudio Muñoz; and She Persisted: Sonia Sotomayor. 

For her term as National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Medina will engage readers across the country through her new platform Cuéntame!: Let's Talk Books. Inspired by the Spanish phrase that friends and families use when catching up with one another, ¡Cuéntame! encourages connection among families, classrooms, libraries and communities by talking about books--both books that reflect the readers' lived experiences and those that expose readers to new perspectives.

"It's an enormous honor to advocate for the reading and writing lives of our nation's children and families," Medina said. "I realize the responsibility is critical, but with the fine examples of previous ambassadors to guide me, I am eager to get started on my vision for this important work. More than anything, I want to make reading and story-sharing something that happens beyond classroom and library walls. I want to tap into books and stories as part of everyday life, with all of us coming to the table to share the tales that speak to us and that broaden our understanding of one another."

As National Ambassador, Medina will encourage families and young people to build relationships with their local libraries, and will create materials to introduce and connect readers with authors across a range of styles and genres. During in-person visits with students, Medina will discuss her work and host "book talks" with kids. Medina believes that when we talk about the books we enjoy with others, we share who we are as thinkers, as readers and as people in our families and communities.

"I am delighted Meg Medina will serve as the next National Ambassador for Young People's Literature," said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. "Meg's warmth and openness, coupled with her long-running commitment to young readers, libraries and librarians, is extraordinary. I look forward to the ways she will invite young people--especially Spanish and bilingual speakers--to share their favorite books and stories."

Carl Lennertz, executive director of Every Child a Reader and the Children's Book Council, said: "We couldn't be more pleased with the selection of Meg Medina as the next ambassador. She will inspire young people of all ages over the next two years with her energy, ideas and passion for reading and storytelling."

An inauguration ceremony will be held on Tuesday, January 24, at 10:30 a.m. at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

Barbara's Bookstore has opened a new store in the Yorktown Center mall in Lombard, Ill.

The approximately 8,000-square-foot store sells new books in all genres for children, teens and adults and officially opened on December 17. Social media manager Sophia Speranza said the new store has a "giant" children's section that includes a mural, train set and kid-sized tables and chairs, and there are large manga and coffee-table/art book sections as well.

The back of the store features a large space that will be used for future author events and signings, and scattered throughout the store are a handful of seating areas for shoppers to sit and read.

Barbara's Bookstore dates back to 1963 and now has seven locations throughout the greater Chicago area.

Jonathan Raban

Jonathan Raban, the British travel writer, critic and novelist "known for his candid accounts of traveling the world in books such as Passage to Juneau and Coasting," died January 17, the Guardian reported. He was 80. Raban attended the University of Hull and went into academia at the University of East Anglia, but "he spent his vacations writing fiction and journalism, and eventually moved to London to become a freelance writer in 1969, lodging with the U.S. poet Robert Lowell. The two became friends, and Raban was inspired by Lowell's ability for 'turning the turmoil of his life into art.' "

Raban traveled through the Middle East in Arabia: Through the Looking Glass (1979); down the Mississippi River in Old Glory (1981); around the British Isles by boat in Coasting (1986); and across the Atlantic on a container ship in Hunting Mister Heartbreak (1991). He subsequently "unpicked the history of south-eastern Montana" in Bad Land: An American Romance (1996), the Guardian noted, adding that his 1999 book, Passage to Juneau, "began as a tale of navigating Alaska's Inside Passage, until his trip was interrupted by the death of his father and the end of his marriage, transforming the book into an exploration of mortality and fatherhood." He also wrote three novels: Foreign Land (1985), Waxwings (2003) and Surveillance (2006).

Noting that some of his critics took issue with his vivid and often harsh descriptions of the people he encountered, befriended and sometimes romanced on his trips, the Guardian wrote that Raban once responded to a particularly offended critic: "How are you going to report life if you report it as a series of wonderful people? Some people are repulsive. Some are lovable."

Clare Alexander, his literary agent, recalled that after he suffered a stroke in 2011, a doctor had said: "You're the one who used to be a writer." Raban replied: "I very much hope that I'm still a writer." Added Alexander: "And so he was to the very end, completing his memoir shortly before his health began to fail." Father and Son is due to be published this autumn.

The day before he died, Raban dictated an e-mail to his daughter Julia, to be sent to all his friends. "Even though he knew he was facing the end, he bid us all farewell in perfectly judged sentences and paragraphs," Alexander said. 

In a tribute, author Phillip Marsden described Raban as "one of a generation of writers who helped to drag travel writing away from its hotel-reviewing, holiday-brochure corridor and into the halls of literature. Colin Thubron, Paul Theroux, Redmond O'Hanlon and Bruce Chatwin were among those (almost all men) who in the late 1970s and early 1980s resurrected the journey as one of the great narrative structures. They produced books that celebrate big ideas, remote places and the endless and ageless diversity of our planet. In Raban's case, he did it with a view of the world that was both darkly comic and sardonic, delivered in prose that can pierce your heart with its accuracy."

Picador publisher Mary Mount said: "Jonathan Raban was a beloved Picador author and we are immensely proud to have been his publishers over so many years and so many wonderful books. He was that rare sort of writer who could write about himself and about the world he travelled through with equal precision, honesty, humor and great beauty. His death is a great loss for us all."

Baker & Taylor Publisher Services has added three new client publishers:

The Little Press, Wood Ridge, N.J., a children's book publisher that focuses on bringing new talent and new voices to children's literature. The Little Press has 17 titles with plans to publish 3-4 titles per year, spread out among multiple imprints, which include The Little Press (picture books), Blue Bronco Books (middle grade), Blue Bronco Books, Jr. (early reader/chapter books), PISH (young adult), and Bless This Press (children's Christian).

Rainbow Morning Music Press, the publishing imprint of the songwriter, storyteller, and TV personality Barry Louis Polisar. Polisar has been a regular musical performer on the Learning Channel and was the star of an Emmy Award-winning TV show for children. He's also written songs for Sesame Street and the Weekly Reader, and his song "All I Want Is You" is the first track on the Juno movie soundtrack. In addition to his writing, Barry visits schools and libraries throughout the U.S. and Europe, and he has performed at the White House, the Smithsonian and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. His current list of books includes more than a dozen children's picture and humor titles. Polisar is a five-time Parents' Choice Award winner and was given a Special Library Recognition Award for his "ability to communicate with and excite children to read."

Gnome Road Publishing, Louisville, Ky., a children's book publisher whose team members come from a variety of backgrounds and have deep experience in the book industry. With an eye toward books that encourage re-readability, Gnome Road produces "books that engage and inform, develop and strengthen a love for reading, and bring smiles and laughter to the world."

"Warm up with a good book" was the seasonally apt sidewalk chalkboard message in front of Market Block Books, Troy, N.Y.

Niki Marion has been promoted to educational sales associate from educational sales assistant at Lee & Low Books.

"If all the winter days were like this one, I suppose I wouldn't appreciate them, but today was mighty fine all the same," Wild Geese Bookshop, Franklin, Ind., posted on Instagram.

Today:
Fresh Air: Matthew Connelly, author of The Declassification Engine: What History Reveals About America's Top Secrets (Pantheon, $32.50, 9781101871577).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Dolly Parton, co-author of Dolly Parton's Billy the Kid Makes It Big (Penguin Workshop, $19.99, 9780593661574).

Sherri Shephard Show: Kristin Chenoweth, author of I'm No Philosopher, But I Got Thoughts: Mini-Meditations for Saints, Sinners, and the Rest of Us (Harper Celebrate, $22.99, 9781400228492).

Late Night with Seth Meyers repeat: Stephen Markley, author of The Deluge (Simon & Schuster, $32.50, 9781982123093).

Book TV airs on C-Span 2 this weekend from 8 a.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Monday and focuses on political and historical books as well as the book industry. The following are highlights for this coming weekend. For more information, go to Book TV's website.

Saturday, January 21
3:15 p.m. William Cross, author of Winslow Homer: American Passage (‎Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $50, 9780374603793). (Re-airs Sunday at 3:15 a.m.)

6 p.m. Stephanie Schorow, author of The Great Boston Fire: The Inferno That Nearly Incinerated the City (Globe Pequot, $24.95, 9781493054985). (Re-airs Sunday at 6 a.m.)

7:05 p.m. Steve Wiegand, author of 1876: Year of the Gun (‎Bancroft Press, $33, 9781610885805). (Re-airs Sunday at 7:05 a.m.)

Sunday, January 22
10 a.m. Philip Bump, author of The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America (Viking, $30, 9780593489697). (Re-airs Sunday at 10 p.m.)

2 p.m. Boyah Farah, author of America Made Me a Black Man: A Memoir (Harper, $26.99, 9780063073357). (Re-airs Monday at 2 a.m.)

3:45 p.m. Dipo Faloyin, author of Africa Is Not a Country: Notes on a Bright Continent (Norton, $30, 9780393881530). (Re-airs Monday at 3:45 a.m.)

4:25 p.m. Charlayne Hunter-Gault, author of My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives (Harper, $27.99, 9780063135390). (Re-airs Monday at 4:25 a.m.)

Selected new titles appearing next Tuesday, January 24:

Unraveling: What I Learned About Life While Shearing Sheep, Dyeing Wool, and Making the World's Ugliest Sweater by Peggy Orenstein (Harper, $27.99, 9780063081727) is a memoir about making a sweater from scratch.

What's Gotten Into You: The Story of Your Body's Atoms, from the Big Bang Through Last Night's Dinner by Dan Levitt (Harper, $32, 9780063251182) explores the origins of elements in the human body.

In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust by Richard Hurowitz (Harper, $28.99, 9780063037236) profiles some of the 27,000 individuals honored as "Righteous Among the Nations" in Yad Vashem.

The Devil's Ransom by Brad Taylor (Morrow, $32, 9780063221987) is the 17th Pike Logan military thriller.

The World and All That It Holds: A Novel by Aleksandar Hemon (MCD, $28, 9780374287702) follows a Sarajevo pharmacist dragged into World War I.

The Family Business 6 by Carl Weber and La Jill Hunt (Urban Books, $27, 9781645561484) continues the Family Business suspense series.

Hands by Torrey Maldonoda (Nancy Paulsen Books, $16.99, 9780593323793) features a young man who learns how to box so he can stand up to his stepdad.

This Is Not My Home by Vivienne Chang, illus. by Eugenia Yoh (Little, $18.99, 9780316377102) is a picture book in which a girl must come to terms with her family's move to Taiwan.

Paperbacks:
Do I Know You? by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka (Berkley, $16.99, 9780593201954).

When Stars Collide by Susan Elizabeth Phillips (Avon, $9.99, 9780062973092).

The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi (Tor, $17.99, 9781250878533).

Illogical: Saying Yes to a Life Without Limits by Emmanuel Acho (Flatiron, $18.99, 9781250836465).

Game On: Tempting Twenty-Eight by Janet Evanovich (Pocket, $9.99, 9781982154882).

From last week's Indie bestseller lists, available at IndieBound.org, here are the recommended titles, which are also Indie Next Great Reads:

Hardcover
All the Broken Places: A Novel by John Boyne (Pamela Dorman, $28, 9780593653067). "Gretel Fernsby is a character for the ages! She's a 91-year-old full of guilt with stories to tell. Boyne writes her with great compassion--maybe more than she deserves--and brings alive a story spanning decades and continents." --Claire Benedict, Bear Pond Books, Montpelier, Vt.

Have I Told You This Already?: Stories I Don't Want to Forget to Remember by Lauren Graham (Ballantine, $28, 9780593355428). "This book is like sitting down with an old friend! Learn about an actor's climb to the top, what book she keeps by her bedside, and what she thinks about when she walks around town. I read it as quickly as her Lorelai Gilmore character talked!" --Margaret Walker, Union Avenue Books, Knoxville, Tenn.

Paperback
How to Survive Everything: A Novel by Ewan Morrison (Harper Perennial, $17, 9780063247321). "It's much too early to start naming the best pandemic novels of our uncanny reality, but I have a feeling that How to Survive Everything will be remembered as one of the greats." --Jordan Pulaski, Small Friend Records & Books, Richmond, Va.

For Ages 5 to 8
Agatha May and the Anglerfish by Nora Morrison and Jessie Ann Foley, illus. by Mika Song (Dial Books, $18.99, 9780593324752). "My heart was stolen by Agatha May and her love for the anglerfish. This picture book is a love letter to kids who struggle with fitting in, with hearts full of unique and quirky passions." --Tori-Lynn Bell, House of Books, Kent, Conn.

For Ages 8 to 12
Santiago!: Santiago Ramón y Cajal--Artist, Scientist, Troublemaker by Jay Hosler (Margaret Ferguson Books, $14.99, 9780823454891). "Santiago! is a delight! A graphic novel is perfect for Jay Hosler's dramatic biography of Santiago Ramón y Cajal, a neuroscientist who won the Nobel prize in 1906. Santiago! presents Cajal's inspiring life with both humor and respect." --Christopher Rose, Andover Bookstore, Andover, Mass.

For Teen Readers
The Poison Season by Mara Rutherford (Inkyard Press, $19.99, 9781335915801). "A beautiful and elegant dark fantasy! The world is so unique with a magical wandering forest, its people with magical songs, and a poisonous lake with a secret that enhances the atmosphere of the novel. This standalone is so addicting!" --Haley Calvin, The Novel Neighbor, Webster Groves, Mo.

[Many thanks to IndieBound and the ABA!]

Alex, the glum protagonist of Julia Bartz's The Writing Retreat, has recently crossed into her 30s. Stuck in long-term writer's block, her dreams of making it as a novelist are just about dead; she holds a thankless and "bleakly underpaid" position in publishing; her sex life is equally bleak; and she still mourns her traumatic friend-breakup with the more successful Wren a year ago. So it feels like a shocking and undeserved honor to be accepted to a fantastically exclusive writing retreat hosted by Roza Vallo, the wildly successful novelist Alex has idolized since she was 12 years old. The catch is that Wren has been accepted, too.

Roza's Blackbriar Estate in the Adirondacks in New York is grand, dramatic and supposedly haunted. Roza herself is famous, rather controversial and private: the five young women attending the retreat must sign NDAs. Alex's adoration of her enigmatic hero is enormous, and she senses this is her big shot at turning her life around: "If I lived in a pocket of Roza Vallo's brain, however small, I sensed it would bolster my own existence." She is also nearly crippled by anxiety about being near Wren--but that concern is quickly overshadowed by the terms of Roza's intensely competitive program for the retreat. The five writers in attendance must each complete a whole novel in just 28 days, and the best of their works will win a million-dollar advance on a publishing deal. Even as the high-speed writing race ramps up and the drama with Wren continues to smolder, it emerges that something still more sinister is going on behind the scenes at Blackbriar Estate. Inexorably, The Writing Retreat evolves into a locked-room mystery, as eight women--five young writers, two staff and Roza--find themselves snowed in at Blackbriar and beset by potentially fatal threats that may be supernatural or simply human evil.

Bartz imbues her writing with a shape-shifting momentum: the plot's focus moves from the small, painful dramas of competition and jealousies in friendship into horror and psychological suspense. Blackbriar Estate is both magnetic, in its haunting history and narrative possibilities, and stifling. The world of writing and publishing can be, at turns, solitary, socially supportive, triumphant and backbiting, and The Writing Retreat encompasses all these possibilities and more, as it explores friendship and family traumas, artistic crises and human nature. Bartz's debut subverts genre in the interest of entertainment, satire and chilling thrills. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: In this shape-shifting tale, aspiring novelists come together at a possibly haunted estate with a famously reclusive writer--for what turns out to be as much horror as inspiration.