Kidstop Toys & Books in Scottsdale, Ariz., reopened last weekend under new ownership after closing in February, WBRC reported. Kristen Roehmer, a "lifelong customer" of Kidstop, has purchased the store from previous owner Kate Tanner, who decided to close the book and toy store last December.

In her announcement late last year, Tanner explained that increased rent, inflation, and the lingering effects of the Covid-19 pandemic had combined to make the store's financial situation difficult. At the same time, the store had been on the market for "quite a few months" without Tanner being able to find a buyer. She chose to retire and close the store early in 2023.

Roehmer recalled that she saw the closing sign go up and thought, "What is happening to Kidstop?" Shortly afterward she called Tanner and "within a few hours" the deal was complete. Roehmer told WBRC that "great people in the community" stepped up and made the deal possible. A banker offered Roehmer to help with ordering new inventory and restocking the shelves, while an attorney helped renegotiate a more favorable lease with the property owner. Now, she continued, she feels "so optimistic" about the store's future.

Tanner is helping Roehmer with the transition and noted that customers are "so excited" that the bookstore is coming back. Before the outpouring of support, Tanner had "never realized Kidstop was that big a part of the community." She added, while tearing up: "touching."

This year marks the 10th anniversary for Independent Bookstore Day, the national one-day party celebrating bookstores, and below is a look at what some indies around the country have planned for Saturday, April 29.

The Greater Charlotte Book Crawl has returned for its second year and features 15 participating bookstores in and near Charlotte, N.C. Passports have been available at participating stores since April 1, and customers have until April 29 to visit as many as they can. 

Readers who collect all 15 stamps will receive a special edition vinyl decal designed by a local artist and will be entered into the grand prize drawing. The grand prize winner will receive gift cards from all participating stores totaling $300. More details, and a complete list of participating bookstores, can be found here.

The week-long Brooklyn Bookstore Crawl will begin on April 22 and include 25 bookstores this year, from Bay Ridge in the south to Greenpoint in the north. Customers who collect five stamps from participating stores will receive a 25% off coupon to use at any of the 25 bookstores, and each stamp will count as a raffle ticket to be used at the afterparty on Independent Bookstore Day.

On April 29, the Center for Fiction will host an open house from noon till 5 p.m. followed by an IBD afterparty. There will be drinks, raffles, and plenty of bookstore swag. More details about the afterparty will be announced soon.

Twenty-three stores across the Minneapolis and St. Paul area have once more teamed up with Rain Taxi to create the Twin Cities Independent Bookstore Day Passport. This year's passports have been illustrated by artist Kevin Cannon, and among the bookstores joining for the first time are Comma in Linden Hills and Black Garnet Books in St. Paul. Uncle Hugo's & Uncle Edgar's, now in a new location, have also returned to the festivities.

Bookstore customers have between April 24 and April 29 to collect stamps from participating stores. Each stamp received activates a coupon for that store, and there will be a variety of prizes, including literary packs from sponsors and a grand prize of two dozen books from each of the participating stores.

More than 40 stores are taking part this year in the Chicagoland Bookstore Crawl. Readers who visit 10 stores on April 29 and get their passports stamped will receive 10% off at participating bookstores for an entire year, while those who visit 15 stores will receive 15% off. Last year, more than 100 people went to 10 stores in a single day and more than 40 visited 15.

More information can be found at ChiLoveBooks.com, and on April 29 readers will be encouraged to post pictures of their purchases on social media using the hashtag #ChiLoveBooks.

In Wichita, Kan., Watermark Books is celebrating IBD with a special storytime and art activity for children, a signing with local author Jill Miller (Never Finished) and a poetry reading featuring poets from the anthology Level Land: Poems For and About the I-35 Corridor. Additionally, Watermark will be rolling out new store shirts and there will be free cookies, a prize wheel, and special deals for shoppers who wear their Watermark merch.

Barnes & Noble will open a new location in Philadelphia, Pa., on Wednesday, April 12. The store, located at 1708 Chestnut St. in Center City, resides in a space formerly occupied by a Forever 21 and features B&N's new store design. Sportswriter Ray Didinger will preside over the ribbon cutting for the new location and will sign copies of his memoir, Finished Business: My Fifty Years of Headlines, Heroes, and Heartaches (Temple University Press).

Previously, B&N had a location in Rittenhouse Square that was in operation for 26 years.

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Also on April 12, B&N is reopening its Danbury, Conn., store in the Danbury Fair Mall. Previously located in Danbury Square, the shop now has a B&N Cafe and spans 20,000 square feet across two floors. It will officially open at 10 a.m. Wednesday, with author Amy Poeppel (The Sweet Spot) on hand for a ribbon cutting and signing.

The store had operated in Danbury Square for 32 years.

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Barnes & Noble plans to open a new location in Wareham, Mass., on Wednesday, June 14, Wareham Week reported. The store, which will be just under 8,000 square feet, will be in the Wareham Crossing shopping mall. Other retailers at the mall include GameStop, JC Penney, Lowe's, Michaels, Petco, TJ Maxx, Staples, and Target.

Wareham Week noted that the town has not had a bookstore since 2011, when Borders closed a 25,000-square-foot store in the same shopping mall.

Robin Hunt, former Scholastic Education publishing director, has died. He was 55. The Bookseller reported that Hunt began his career as an editor at Questions Publishing Company in Birmingham, England. After five years, he became a list development manager at Nelson Thornes before joining Scholastic 19 years ago as a commissioning editor, then becoming publishing director in 2006. Hunt left Scholastic in 2021 to focus on his health. 

As vice-chair of the Education Publishing Company, he contributed to many industry initiatives on education publishing policy as well as being a longstanding trustee of the Publishing Training Centre, the Bookseller noted.

"Our Scholastic family has shone brighter for his presence but we are all incredibly sad at the news of our friend and colleague Robin," said Catherine Bell, Scholastic group managing director. "Robin will be missed by everyone who knew him and we send our thoughts and strength to his wife, Fiona, his family and the Scholastic team who worked with him." 

A statement from the publisher added: "Robin's colleagues have benefitted from his in-depth knowledge of the curriculum and his enthusiasm for helping teachers and parents access the right information to further children's learning. Robin understood the importance of literacy and acquiring skills to enrich your life and he shared his knowledge generously with good humor, enthusiasm and the sparkle of much-needed publishing passion. Beyond his work achievements Robin was an outstanding quiz master, a good friend, and although a terrible horse racing tipster he was brilliant company whatever the situation." 

Scholastic noted: "Under his guidance, Scholastic published the bestselling 100 Lessons, the National Curriculum Practice workbook series, as well as successfully entering the 11+ market. Robin's infectious enthusiasm led to him developing strong internal relationships and external partnerships with publishers around the world." 

As part of Mircea Cărtărescu's Breakthrough American Tour, Third Place Books in Seattle, Wash., hosted the Romanian author at the Seattle Public Library. Cărtărescu spoke with University of Washington's Ileana Marin about his novel Solenoid (Deep Vellum), translated into English by Sean Cotter. The Romanian Cultural Institute of New York and Deep Vellum Books are sponsoring the tour, which includes stops at City Lights Bookstore, McNally Jackson, and The Wild Detectives.

"How much is that kitty in the window???" Left Bank Books, St. Louis, Mo., asked. "He's not for sale! Nor adoption! He's stuck with us foreverrrrrrrr!!! Have you spotted Orleans in the window? He's out more and more with the sunshine! Drop by to check out our fab window displays, courtesy of Bri, and feel free to tap lightly if you see your fave bookstore kitty! Where's your kitty's fave place to hang?!"

Tim McCall has joined Baker & Taylor Publisher Services as trade sales director. He was most recently at TA-DA! Language Productions, a start-up in children's language learning. Earlier he was associate publisher/v-p, sales for Melville House, director of trade sales for Dover, and v-p of online sales and marketing for Penguin Random House.

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Chantal Gersch has been promoted from publicist to senior publicist at Macmillan Children's Publishing Group.

Getting Unstuck from PTSD by Patricia Resick, Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, and Stefanie T. LoSavio (Guilford Press).

Today:
Fresh Air: Mary Louise Kelly, author of It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs (Holt, $26.99, 9781250859853).

Tomorrow:
CBS Mornings: Amanda Kloots, author of Tell Me Your Dreams (HarperCollins, $19.99, 9780063225114).

The animal puppets that are central to the theater adaptation of Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi "are works of art," Playbill noted in exploring how the creations, co-designed by Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell, are brought to life on stage. 

Adapted by Lolita Chakrabarti, Life of Pi the play made its world premiere in 2019 at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield and transferred to the West End, winning five 2022 Olivier Awards, including best new play. The production also won for best supporting actor, for its team of seven tiger puppeteers, and best set design, awarded to set designer Tim Hatley and to Barnes and Caldwell for the puppet design. After a pre-Broadway run at American Repertory Theater, the show is currently playing Broadway's Schoenfeld Theatre.

"I was really keen to bring some of the rigor that I learned as an actor... to the art form of puppetry," said Caldwell. "What I love about puppetry is we're showing you on stage how we're doing it. Yet, you still believe it's alive. I think that's the magic, because then there's no trickery.... 

"Puppetry does what Hamlet talks about: It holds the mirror up to life.... It holds the mirror up to the miracle of the fact that you are alive and the fragility of that and the improbability of that. The audience knows that if the puppeteers let go of that thing, it'll just drop to the floor. So, they're showing you how fragile and how miraculous it is that this thing is here and alive. And they're reminding you that you are also in that position."

Susan L. Shirk won the C$50,000 (about US$37,000) Lionel Gelber Prize, which honors the "best nonfiction book in English on foreign affairs that seeks to deepen public debate on significant international issues," for Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise (Oxford University Press). The award is presented by the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy.

Jury co-chair Ian Shugart said Shirk "skillfully answers two critical questions for managing the 'China problem': how did we get here and where are we going?" Jury co-chair Janice Stein noted that the author "peels away the layers of Chinese politics to uncover the divisions and coalitions that drive Chinese decisions. Much of what alarms the world today, she tells us, began not with Xi Jinping but in the log-rolling politics of overreach under Hu Jintao."

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Finalists have been selected for the Independent Book Publishers Association's Benjamin Franklin Awards, given to independently published books, and can be seen here. Winners in 56 categories will be announced May 5 during the IBPA Publishing University in San Diego, Calif.

There's something inherently brave about starting over, as Deepa Varadarajan explores in her charming debut novel, Late Bloomers. That's what Nikesh thinks of his parents, anyway, watching "the two of them trying to cobble together new lives while other Indian people their age were settling into creaky lawn chairs... reconciling themselves to deadened marriages and eventless retirements." But not Suresh and Lata, who have divorced after 36 years of unhappy marriage. Lata gets her first-ever job at a local university's music library and enjoys living alone in her condo. Suresh turns to online dating, eternally optimistic despite the never-ending lies of "[a]ll these internet women." And while Nikesh finds his father's dating adventures somewhat romantic, his sister, Priya, describes her father's behavior as "post-midlife crisis; act your age; ridiculous; embarrassment."

As the narrative shifts among the quartet's first-person perspectives, readers learn that, of course, neither Nikesh nor Priya have much of a leg to stand on in judging their parents' actions: Nikesh has his own complicated relationship with the mother of his young son, and Priya has been involved with a married man in an affair that has lasted about a year and a half. And neither Suresh nor Lata are quite as happy in their second chances as they pretend to be. All of these secrets come to a head when the four reconvene at the family home for Nikesh's son's first birthday.

Late Bloomers is a novel that celebrates love--and the quest for it--in all of its many varieties: familial, romantic, parental, dutiful, young, old, passionate, passionless. Lata relearns how to have a relationship with Suresh outside the bounds of their less-than-happy marriage and with her children as grown adults. Priya questions her past romantic mistakes and what draws her to an unavailable man. Suresh seeks an escape from himself in any variety, feeling his failures as a "portly, indecisive man, who rarely knew the right things to say, who bungled his first marriage, who loved his children but felt his absentmindedness often bordered on neglect." Nikesh avoids the conflicts in his own career and relationship by burying himself in his role of new father.

Within these deeply complex individuals and the many ways they knock together, Varadarajan offers a novel shaped--but not defined--by the flaws of its characters, a story that peels back their layers as they find their way as individuals and as a family. Late Bloomers, at times laugh-out-loud funny and at times quietly heartbreaking, is an intricate novel about people who rediscover themselves. Or perhaps, by being honest with themselves and with each other, discover themselves for the very first time. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer

Shelf Talker: A family of four gets a second chance at self-discovery--as individuals and as a family--following the dissolution of a decades-long unhappy marriage.

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

1. Impromptu by Reid Hoffman
2. Reach by Zach Benson
3. The 16 Undeniable Laws of Communication by John C. Maxwell
4. Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry and Jean Greaves
5. Right Man, Right Time by Meghan Quinn
6. The Inmate by Freida McFadden
7. Things We Hide from the Light by Lucy Score
8. Champagne Venom by Nicole Fox
9. Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score
10. The Perfect Marriage by Jeneva Rose

[Many thanks to IndieReader.com!]