Moon & Back Bookstore opened last month in West Medford, Mass., Macaroni KID reported. Located at 458 High St., Moon & Back Bookstore is a children's-only bookstore with a mission of empowering children to "embrace what makes them unique, so they will grow into kind, smart humans that will be a force for good in the world."

From February 13-15, owner Michelle Smith held a weekend full of grand-opening festivities that included a ribbon-cutting ceremony with the Medford Chamber of Commerce, a storytime led by the mayor, and a variety of giveaways, raffles, and treats.

At present, the store hosts weekly storytime sessions, and in the months ahead Smith plans to expand those offerings to include author events, book clubs, and additional storytimes for special events and holidays. The space is also available for rent on Sundays for private events like birthday parties and baby showers.

Smith told Macaroni KID that she was inspired to open the bookstore after seeing the need for it in the area and deciding "that I could do it myself, and that I could do it in a way that aligns with my values and aspirations for the kind of community I want to be a part of. I took to heart the Gandhi inspired quote, 'be the change you wish to see in the world.'"

When it came to assembling the store's inventory, she began by looking at her home collection of children's books and expanding from there. She also consulted with librarians at local schools and public libraries, to make sure there would be something for everyone.

Smith noted that the store's name was inspired by Sam McBratney's Guess How Much I Love You: "I always ask my boys, 'do you know how much I love you?' and follow it up with 'to the moon and back.' They hear this so often that when my youngest was one, his very first phrase was 'moon and back!' "

A bookstore and cafe called Wild Meadows Books and Cafe will open in Williston, Vt., this summer, Seven Days reported.

Susan and Rick Cote

Owners Susan and Rick Cote, who also own the local newspaper the Williston Observer, plan to have a full kitchen along with beer and wine service and a cozy environment for bookstore events. 

Susan Cote told Seven Days that she and her husband thought an independent bookstore would go hand-in-hand with their newspaper business, and they "felt like it would be a great addition to the Williston community. Our town can use more gathering places."

The bookstore will be located in a new building that is currently under construction; the pair aim to have Wild Meadows up and running in late summer.

After an online debut in September 2024, I Have Lived a Thousand Lives Bookstore opened a bricks-and-mortar storefront last month in Athena, Ore., the East Oregonian reported.

The store is located at 402 E. Main St., and owners Kalyn Sloan and Tanna King carry a book inventory consisting mainly of YA and adult books, with an emphasis on titles popular with women and trending on TikTok. Their nonbook offerings include book-related merchandise, like T-shirts that are printed in-house, and they sell homemade cookies and sourdough bread. The owners also hope to add a children's section in the months ahead.

They host book clubs and a monthly "sip and shop" event, in which customers browse and connect with each other and the owners. King told the East Oregonian that she and Sloan "want to be what makes them come down here. Not to spend money, but just to have a conversation."

Following the online debut last September, King and Sloan built a following by offering blind-date-with-a-book packages that included a paper-wrapped book, tea, a book bingo card, and other items. It proved popular enough that they rented a physical storefront less than six months later.

For the moment, Sloan and King still work day jobs and operate the bookstore every weekend, from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. Looking ahead, they would like to switch to running the bookstore full time and eventually move to a larger location.

Barnes & Noble is opening a new store in Gainesville, Va., next Wednesday, March 19.

The new store features a B&N Cafe and resides at 8139 Stonewall Shops Square in the Shops at Stonewall development. It will officially open Wednesday with a ribbon cutting and signing featuring Audrey Ingram, author of The River Runs South and The Group Trip.

The Gainesville store is one of four new B&N locations slated to open in March, and the company expects to open more than 60 new stores in 2025.

We Need Diverse Books is launching the inaugural We Need Diverse Books Day on Thursday, April 3, "to highlight the importance of reading books that reflect the beautifully diverse world." 

WNDB will be recommending titles for all ages, sharing resources on where to find them, and encouraging everyone to read a diverse book. To celebrate We Need Diverse Books Day and 10 years of the nonprofit, WNDB said it is donating 10,000 titles in 2025 to schools and libraries across the country. 

"We invite you to pick out and read a diverse book today--because diverse books are for everyone and these stories ought to be shared and celebrated," said WNDB board chair and author Dhonielle Clayton.

British artist Chris Moore, "who conjured fantastical worlds with high-sheen covers for books by science-fiction masters like Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Alfred Bester, and who lent his artistry to albums by Rod Stewart and Fleetwood Mac," died February 7, the New York Times reported. He was 77.

"Call him a master, or a titan in his sphere, and he simply won't have it," Stephen Gallagher wrote in the introduction to the book Journeyman: The Art of Chris Moore (2000). "The most you'll ever get out of him is a grudging admission of some quiet satisfaction when something in a picture comes right."

Moore provided images for various editions of notable books by Dick, including his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, as well as works by Kurt Vonnegut, Isaac Asimov, Ursula K. Le Guin, H.G. Wells, Alastair Reynolds, J.G. Ballard, Stephen King, and many others.

He created the art for several album covers, including Fleetwood Mac's Penguin and Stewart's The Vintage Years 1969-70, as well as contributing images to magazines like Omni and Asimov's Science Fiction. He also designed wallpaper tied to the Star Wars film The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

"While he considered himself more a craftsman than an artist," Moore conceded "there was a certain magic involved in bringing far-off worlds to life," the Times wrote.

"The process of creating these images was more of a journey of discovery than creation," he said in a 2011 interview with the Red Moon Chronicle, adding that it was as if he "had almost 'found' the image, like it was a combination of some text you'd been given and a series of happy accidents that you had gone through to arrive at this window on the future."

Moore knew what his life's mission was when he was still a child. "I realized from a very early age what I wanted to do, which was nothing to do with fine art as such," he said in an interview published by Artist Partners, an agency that represented him. "A commercial artist was my ambition from around 3 or 4 years old."

Moore produced his first book cover in 1972: a reprint of Lawrence Durrell's 1938 novel, The Black Book. Working with Peter Bennett, the art director at Associated Book Publishers, he was soon illustrating covers for many publications, but admitted he "was barely aware of science fiction" at that point. This all changed with Extro, a British edition of Bester's The Computer Connection (1975).

Moore exhibited his work for the first time in 1995, at the World Science Fiction Convention in Glasgow.

Once Upon A Time Bookstore, Montrose, Calif., shared photos of its latest storefront window display: "We're BUZZING with excitement for our Be a Bee Parade and Story Time with Shawn Harris THIS Saturday, March 15th at 11 am! In honor of the new picture book Let’s Be Bees, the parade has already started in our window with the Jellycat Bartholomew Bear Bumblebee leading a parade of Albee Bees under the careful guidance of Mr. Bear and Fernando Bear also dressed up as bees."

"Spring into a good book." That was the seasonally hopeful message on the sidewalk chalkboard in front of Henry's Books, Spearfish, S.Dak., which noted: "Come on down, fam! Support small businesses in Downtown Spearfish today!"

Posted by RoscoeBooks, Chicago, Ill.: "It's a beautiful (fake) spring day and our front door is propped open to catch the breeze and several doggos have wandered in with their humans and all is right with the world... at least for today."

Sojourner Elleby has been named digital & social media manager at Hachette Book Group. She has more than a decade of experience at media companies such as Bloomberg, Refinery29, iOne Digital, InStyle Magazine, VH1, and BET Networks.

The Last Seed Keeper by Paul Russell (EK Books).

Tomorrow:
Good Morning America: Jefferson Fisher, author of The Next Conversation: Argue Less, Talk More (TarcherPerigee, $30, 9780593718728).

Hope Studios, led by producer Fredrik Wikström Nicastro (A Man Called Otto), is setting up a film adaptation of Robin Sharma's bestselling 1997 book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Deadline reported.  

"I reached out to Robin because I'm a huge fan of the book. I first read it over a decade ago, and it's one of my favorites," Wikström Nicastro said. "I think it has amazing themes about what is important in life and search for meaning and purpose. And it has a very uplifting message about the ability to grow through friendship and to enjoy life and the journey of life."

Sharma noted that he has waited more than 25 years to find the right studio to bring The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari to the big screen: "I'm excited by Fredrik's vision for the movie and his great passion for the story. I feel highly confident this film will inspire many millions of people across the globe, in these turbulent times."

Hope Studios is pursuing other projects that are literary adaptations, including Fredrik Backman's novel Anxious People, which reunites Backman with the creative team behind A Man Called Otto (based on the author's novel A Man Called Ove), including screenwriter David Magee. 

https://www.republicofconsciousnessprize-usa.com

Melvill by Rodrigo Fresán, translated from the Spanish by Will Vanderhyden (Open Letter) has won the third annual Republic of Consciousness Prize, U.S. and Canada, designed to celebrate "the commitment of independent presses to fiction of exceptional literary merit."

One of the judges, Dorian Stuber, said, "Opening Rodrigo Fresán's Melvill, readers will know from the array of footnotes on the first few pages that this book is for the head. But the further they get into its gorgeous prose, so dizzyingly translated by Will Vanderhyden, the more they will see that it's also for the heart. Fresán imagines the future Whaler and scribbler as a boy, loitering at the foot of his father's sickbed, listening to the man tell fevered stories of his life, stories the boy will later mine for his works. How satisfying that the tale of how one of the great American writers came to be, should be told by an Argentinian who has lived for decades in Spain. For Melville, like the United States itself, belongs to everyone. And now, thanks to Open Letter, so does Melvill."

A total of $35,000 will be distributed to the 10 presses, authors, and translators named as finalists for the prize. Each press included in the longlist will receive $2,000. The five shortlisted books will be awarded an additional $3,000 each, split equally between the publisher and author, or publisher, author, and translator, where applicable.

photo: Herbert Kuper

Jaap de Roode grew up in the Netherlands, where he studied biology at Wageningen University. He's now a biology professor at Emory University, where he researches monarch butterflies and their infectious diseases. His discovery that monarchs can use toxic plants as medicine led him to write Doctors by Nature: How Ants, Apes & Other Animals Heal Themselves (Princeton University Press, March 4, 2025), which takes readers into a realm often thought to be the exclusive domain of humans, exploring how scientists are turning to the medical knowledge of the animal kingdom.

Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:

Animals use all sorts of medicines to keep themselves healthy. By studying bees, bears, and butterflies, we may save agriculture and discover new drugs.

On your nightstand now:

Too many books really! I just finished The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, which I thought was an amazing perspective on postwar Holocaust survivors in the Netherlands. Now I am on The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature by Matt Ridley, a popular science book that explains the evolution of human nature (I am rereading it and loving it as much as I did over 20 years ago). My pile also includes Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver (I started it, but haven't finished yet), The Civil War by Bruce Catton (slowly making progress), and Eight Bears by Gloria Dickie (can't wait to get going on that).

Favorite book when you were a child:

I guess it has to be De Kameleon (The Chameleon) by Hotze de Roos. This book series deals with a pair of twin boys who live in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, where they have many adventures with a boat they manage to paint in such a way that it keeps changing colors (hence the name). I dreamed of being on that boat and experiencing sunny days in the typical Dutch landscape of lakes, pastures, and red roof-tiled villages.

Your top five authors:

It is hard to pick favorites, but I really like the books by J.R.R. Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. Frans de Waal's books on the similarities between animals and humans have been hugely influential to me. I also love Harry Mulisch's books, which told me much about how the Second World War has shaped life in the Netherlands. I should also include Tara Westover for her memoir Educated.

Book you've faked reading:

To be honest: anything by Shakespeare. It is not so much that I faked reading it, but that I simply gave up, and opted for Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb instead. I was made to read Shakespeare in high school in the Netherlands when I was 14 or 15 years old and hardly spoke any English yet. That was a sure way to put off a Dutch reader from enjoying some of the most important literature in world history!

Book you're an evangelist for:

Watership Down by Richard Adams. I love how Adams turned his made-up stories about rabbits to keep his children occupied during long car rides into a saga of human strength, conflict, and morality. I read it for my English class and would not stop talking about it during my final oral exam. I was so obsessed with this book that my dad took me to the actual Watership Down (yes, the hill exists) in England to celebrate my high school graduation!

Book you've bought for the cover:

You May Now Kill the Bride by Kate Weston. I like getting page-turning thrillers for long flights, and this one's sleek design stood out in the bookshop at the airport.

Book you hid from your parents:

I am not sure I ever hid a book from my parents. They were quite happy with my reading tons of books. Then again, I did not read any controversial or erotic books at the time.

Book that changed your life:

My parents gave me a Dutch book by David Suzuki that accompanied his TV series The Secrets of Life. I was truly mesmerized by the way in which he described how DNA worked, and the immense amounts of genetic information that each of our cells contains. His analogy was to show massive filing cabinets filled with papers that only had A's, C's, T's, and G's on them. And then he explained how you went from those letters to actual life! I think that book ultimately turned me into a biologist. I actually met him several years ago when he gave a seminar at Emory University, and it was like meeting a rock star.

Favorite line from a book:

"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit" --from The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I cannot remember many specific lines from books, but I feel this sentence nicely captures the character of hobbits. And it is just a great opening sentence.

Five books you'll never part with:

Watership Down by Richard Adams; An Outdoor Journal by Jimmy Carter (signed by the author!); all 16 volumes of my grandfather's antique Winkler Prins Encyclopedia.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I think it is the best in the series, and I remember my excitement to try to figure out if Harry was a horcrux. I would love to relive that quest.

Following five books of poetry, Greg Hewett (Blindsight; darkacre) astonishes with a transcendent first novel about friendship, desire, music, loss, and love in its many forms. No Names is rough-edged, glittering, and brilliant as it spans decades and lives, traveling from a fictional American refinery town to Europe's capitals, from Copenhagen to a place known simply as the Island, and back again.

Solitary teenager Mike's world expands when he meets easy, outgoing Pete, with whom he shares a love of literature and especially music, and a nearly instant firm bond. Music, for Mike, is all bound up with sex and violence and epiphany: "It's like I'm busting out of the prison of myself and giving to the world whatever part of me that's worth anything." The two guitarists form a punk band in the late 1970s, and with their two bandmates take off on a rocketing tour of the United States and then Europe that ends in enigma and tragedy.

In 1993, another angst-ridden teen from the same gritty, class-divided hometown discovers a dusty record in his mother's attic and goes looking for a mostly forgotten punk band. Isaac will pursue the mystery of the No Names until he unearths Mike on a remote island in the Faroes, where the haunted older man has been living as a hermit since the band's 1978 dissolution: "a mythical musician who, for a time, dwelt here and filled the place with songs." Mike is supported by a Danish classical pianist named Daniel who had briefly been a friend to the band. On the island, Mike describes to Daniel "a state of ecstasy, or ekstasis--that is, becoming entranced, being brought out of oneself" by the aurora borealis, but these lines could as easily describe their relationship with music, or with one another. Mike, Pete, Daniel, and Isaac, among others, form permutations and re-combinations of friendship, affection, artistic inspiration, love, and desire.

Hewett brings a poet's ear for language to a complexly layered story that treats sex, drugs, and rock & roll as simultaneously hard-grained and gorgeous. His evocations of music and the power of the muse are tantalizing and apt, as are his lines about the strain of finding oneself, of love and lust and pain. By the time No Names flashes forward to 2018, readers will be spellbound, and as much in love with the novel's protagonists as they are variously entangled with one another. Hewett's first novel is scintillating and absolutely unforgettable. --Julia Kastner, blogger at pagesofjulia

Shelf Talker: This dazzling first novel applies poetry to the overawing power of art, friendship, and the ways in which many forms of love blend into one.

The following were the most popular book club books during February based on votes from book club readers in more than 90,000 book clubs registered at Bookmovement.com:

1. James: A Novel by Percival Everett (Doubleday)
2. The Women: A Novel by Kristin Hannah (St. Martin's Press)
3. The Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon (Doubleday)
4. The God of the Woods by Liz Moore (Riverhead)
5. The Housemaid by Freida McFadden (Grand Central)
6. All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (Crown)
7. The Wedding People: A Novel by Alison Espach (Holt)
8. The Lion Women of Tehran by Marjan Kamali (Gallery Books)
9. The Measure by Nikki Erlick (Morrow)
10. Here One Moment by Liane Moriarty (Crown)

Rising Stars:
The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel (Knopf)
The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon (Thesis)