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I am traveling this week, visiting family in Denver. And we went to visit the Tattered Cover independent bookstore.

I like to visit indie bookstores when I travel because it gives me a better idea of the industry as it plays out across the nation. And it’s fun to see all the different ways that people display books.

Here are a couple pics of different areas of this great indie bookstore. Click to see the photos full size.

One of the interesting things at Tattered Cover was the Espresso Book Machine. This is a print-on-demand printer that both prints and binds a book while you watch. I’ve heard of them for several years, of course, but never seen one. It’s large. Watching the pages flip through the printer is fascinating. Tattered Cover Press is the official designation of books printed here.

I also stopped by the Kobo ebook reader section and checked out all of their selection. (Read my recent post about why you should pay attention to Kobo. Hint: It has to do with indie bookstores.) Buy my books in Kobo format!

Of course–one of the best reasons to visit Colorado this time of year is the aspens!

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This week we continue to celebrate our Fourth Blogiversary (the official date is today!) with our giveaway extravaganza.

From Carmela's Friday post:
Today, I'm thrilled to announce an extra-special giveaway in honor of our FOURTH BLOGIVERSARY. To show our appreciation to our blog readers AND to one of our favorite independent booksellers, we'll be giving away FOUR $25 gift certificates to Anderson's Bookshops! And, as a bonus, Anderson's is generously offering our winners a 20% discount, which will help defray the shipping costs if you're unable to redeem your gift certificate in person.

If you haven't already done so, hop on over and read the rest of her post for entry details as well as more information about our blog, Anderson's, and a terrific bonus poem from our very own April (who's also celebrating a birthday this week).

In follow-up to our ode to D.E.A.R. and Beverly Cleary, we Teaching Authors are discussing the great independent bookstores that play such a crucial role in getting the right books into the hands of the right readers.  I will never forget my first visit to the Tattered Cover in Denver.  I was on a business trip, and I got no other business done on that day.  [I owe a debt of gratitude to my patient boss, Stan Cohen.]

Here in exurban Maryland, we have nothing like the Tattered Cover or Anderson's.  Washington has the great Politics and Prose, but my visits to DC with kids at this point in life typically involve the Air and Space Museum, the National Mall, and a stroller.

If you ask me, the coolest and most accessible independent bookstore in my neck of the woods is Turn the Page Bookstore, owned by the husband of local (and international) celebrity Nora Roberts.  Roberts lives in rural Washington County and has singlehandedly turned the tiny town of Boonsboro into a Destination (with a capital D).  Visitors from around the country flock to the bookstore for signings by a variety of authors and may stay overnight in Roberts's nearby bed and breakfast, stop by her gift shop, or have a meal at her son's taphouse. 

In my job as an adjunct instructor at Hagerstown Community College, I am fortunate to be a part of the advisory committee for this summer's Nora Roberts Writing Institute.  Before a recent meeting at Dan's Taphouse, I slipped into Turn the Page for some speed shopping.  Unlike the sprawling Tattered Cover, it's a tiny space, with a nook devoted to children's books, a coffee bar featuring a local roaster's brews, and a terrific assortment of popular fiction, with the literary book club du month selections shelved beside the "beach reads." 

As someone who writes in what may certainly be considered marginalized genres (soap operas and children's books), I greatly appreciated the equalizing effect of this shelving method.  As a child, I fell in love with reading because it was fun and transformative.   There is much good writing in popular fiction, and I love the idea of celebrating the books people read because they want to rather than the ones they feel they have to.  Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Nora Roberts.
--Jeanne Marie

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See you at the Tattered Cover Bookstore on Colfax this Saturday, Oct. 1st, 3pm. I'll be handing out special Unwanteds prize packs with purchase of the book.

Coming soon -- stops in Holland, Okemos, and Ferndale, Michigan. Join me in my home state!

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I just did a big update of my website --terriclarkbooks.com. I hope you'll check it out. And if you're local, my BFF Lynda Sandoval and I will be doing signings of Breaking Up Is Hard To Do in the next two weeks. Please stop by and see us! 

Saturday, June 21st 2008
7:00 PM

As part of Booked, our new series of interactive events for young readers, three local authors will discuss and sign their new books for teens. Denise Vega will present her book Fact of Life #31 ($16.99 Random House), and Lynda Sandoval and Terri Clark will discuss their new book Breaking Up is Hard to Do ($8.99 Houghton Mifflin). This will not be your ordinary panel discussion. It will be three of our favorite YA authors with their guards down, taking questions, reading, offering playlists and more! Tattered Cover, East Colfax 

Saturday, June 28th 2008
1:00 PM

How can anyone survive the pain of the end of a first love? This frank, humorous and heart warming book is just the prescription. Young adult authors Terri Clark and Lynda Sandoval will read and discuss their book, Breaking Up is Hard to Do at the new Park Meadows Borders in Lone Tree.

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On May 21, Rudy Ch. Garcia and I hosted a reading and signing event for Latinos In Lotusland at the Colfax Avenue version of the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver. The bookstore people, as always, were gracious and accommodating; the audience was attentive and eager to hear about this amazing collection of short stories that features more than thirty writers; and the night turned into one of those where everything fell into place and a great time was had by all. Camaraderie and affection filled the air as old friends greeted one another with enthusiastic hugs, while strangers shook hands and introduced themselves. Everyone was primed for a literary evening, and no one left disappointed.

A great crowd showed up for the event.



I opened the evening with some comments about Daniel Olivas's original call for "provocative stories ... from social realism to cuentos de fantasma and anything in between" as long as Los Angeles played an integral role. I pointed out that one of Daniel's goals was to bring together some of the "best contemporary Latino fiction" about Los Angeles. And then Rudy and I set out to demonstrate to the audience how well Daniel had succeeded in reaching his goal.


Rudy continued, in his inimitable style, with more short pieces. He opened with a page from Luis Alberto Urrea's The White Girl, quickly moved to several paragraphs from Frederick Luis Aldama (A Long Story Cut Short); came on strong with choice words from Kathleen de Azevedo's The True Story; and finished with his own LAX Confidential. We both wished we had more time to read more selections, but the ones we did manage to fit in were applauded enthusiastically by the audience. Later, several attendees told us that they appreciated the way we presented the stories, whetting their appetites, leaving them with the desire to hear more and, thus, to buy and read the book.

We answered questions: were there any pachuco stories in the collection (check out Kid Zopilote by Mario Suárez); why is profanity necessary in some stories and not in others (Rudy handled that); would we rather write short stories or novels (we like shorts, we like novels, we just want to write); is there a bias in the publishing world against writers from mid-America (h-m-m-m).


We finished by signing books for those who wanted autographs. We mingled a bit, took a few photos, then several of us ended up at the nearby Neighborhood Flix Café bar, where old and sometimes classic movies show continuously on the walls, and you can take your beverage of choice into the theater to watch movies like The Favor, Anamorph and 21. We toasted the book, toasted one another, and speculated about another short story collection, maybe something like Latinos in the Rocky Mountains. What a night.






Rudy surrounded by his proud family at his first reading for a published story.









NEW FROM NEW MEXICO PRESS
The following is from the UNM Press Fall 2008 catalog:



The Song of Jonah
Gene Guerin
In this modern retelling of the Book of Jonah, Fr. Jon, like his biblical counterpart, rejects the call from God to his own “Nineveh.” In an ironic echoing of Jonah’s fate, the priest is swallowed up by a metaphorical whale and deposited on the very shores of the place he was determined to avoid. Nueve Niños, with its long-standing reputation for mistreating its pastors, is an alien world that will prove his ultimate testing ground. Through his slow, often reluctant immersion into the lives of the villagers, Fr. Jon eventually gains insight into himself and his ultimate calling.

Gene Guerin’s novel Cottonwood Saints (UNM Press) won the Mountains and Plains 2007 Regional Book Award for Adult Fiction and the 2006 Premio Aztlán for first-time Hispanic writers. Born and raised in New Mexico, he presently lives in Denver.

ChupaCabra and the Roswell UFO
Rudolfo Anaya
In this second ChupaCabra mystery, Professor Rosa Medina has just arrived in Santa Fe where she meets Nadine, a mysterious sixteen-year-old who insists that the two of them travel to Roswell, New Mexico. Nadine is convinced that C-Force, a secret government agency, has decoded the DNA of ChupaCabra and an extraterrestrial. If the two genomes are combined, a new and horrific life form will be created.

In this fast-paced mystery, Anaya expands the ChupaCabra folklore into a metaphor that deals with the new powers inherent in science. Is ChupaCabra a beast in Latino folktales, used to frighten children, or a lost species being manipulated by C-Force? Rosa’s life hangs in the balance as she and her young accomplice try to find a way to stop C-Force before its mad scientists create a monster.

Rudolfo Anaya has received numerous awards, including the Premio Quinto Sol, the national Chicano literary award, the National Medal of Arts for literature, the PEN Center West Award for Fiction, the American Book Award from The Before Columbus Foundation, the Mexican Medal of Friendship from the Mexican Consulate, and the Western Literature Association’s Distinguished Achievement Award.


Juan the Bear and the Water of Life La Acequia de Juan del Oso
Retold and Translated by Enrique R. Lamadrid and Juan Estevan Arellano; Illustrated by Amy Córdova
La Acequia del Rito y la Sierra in the Mora Valley is the highest and most famous traditional irrigation system in New Mexico. It carries water up and over a mountain ridge and across a sub-continental divide, from the tributaries of the Río Grande to the immense watershed of the Mora, Canadian, Arkansas, and Mississippi Rivers. The names and stories of those who created this acequia to sustain their communities have mostly been lost and replaced by myths and legends. Now, when children ask, some parents attribute the task of moving mountains and changing the course of rivers to Juan del Oso, the stouthearted man whose father was
a bear.

From the mountains of northern Spain to the Andes in South America, Spanish-speaking people have told ancient legends of Juan del Oso and his friends. In this children’s tale, agriculturalist Juan Estevan Arellano and folklorist Enrique Lamadrid share a unique version of a celebrated story that has been told in northern New Mexico for centuries.

Enrique R. Lamadrid, professor of Spanish folklore and literature at the University of New Mexico, was awarded the Americo Paredes Prize in recognition of his work as a cultural activist. Juan Estevan Arellano, a native of Embudo, New Mexico, is a poet, artist, writer, and agronomist. He is an expert in traditional Spanish/Moorish agriculture and the sustaining of traditional crops originally brought to New Mexico from Europe and Central Mexico. Amy Córdova lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she is co-owner of Enger-Córdova Fine Art. She is also an educator and has illustrated many children’s books.

Later.

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As I write, it's Friday afternoon 7/20/2007 and we’re driving through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, heading toward Utah. It’s difficult to write, though, not only because the views are stunning up here at 10,000 feet, but also because the narrow roads are snaking back and forth through the valleys and are making me queasy. More about Colorado in a bit. First, I’ll bring you up to date. Karen helps out—she’s in a different font.

GREEN CHILLI AND GATOS, GATOS, GATOS IN NEW MEXICO

MARK: New Mexico is truly one of my favorite places on earth. I spent a summer in Albuquerque in 1994 and fell in love with adobe houses, pow-wows, green chilli, and the Spanish language. I met Karen the following spring and I think my introduction to the Espanol of New Mexico played a role in my early spark with her – Karen’s family is from Argentina, and from the very beginning I was eager for her to teach me Spanish, which is why I can speak it today.

I think every state has its own unique personality, but in my humble opinion there are probably none so distinct as New Mexico’s. When you’re there, you know it. “The Land of Enchantment” (that’s the state nickname) just looks and feels different from anywhere else.

SANTA FE

KAREN: Santa Fe is beautiful. We spent most of a day walking around the town center. We visited the Georgia O’Keefe museum which was very interesting and gave us a good look into her life and why she loved New Mexico so much. Then went for lunch at a great Mexican restaurant called Tomasitas, where they were amazingly kind to us. Ignatios Patsalis, the owner/manager, showed us the royal treatment by giving us a tour of the restaurant. He took us into his the kitchen and showed us how they make Sopapillas. (MARK: A sopapilla is kind of a deep fried New Mexican donuty thing that, unfortunately, I can’t get enough of.) KAREN: Here is Ignatios showing us a barrel of red hot chili peppers. (MARK: Unfortunately, Lucy decided to stick her finger in and touch one, prompting Ignatios to have us wash her hand with soap immediately, before any of the spiciness got in her eye and burned her. Ahh, life with Lucy…) KAREN: Yes, even Evan ate the red and green chilies! It was the best Mexican food ever!! Thanks Ignatios and Tamasitas!




GARCIA STREET BOOKS

Santa Fe is the home of Garcia Street Books, a charming independent bookstore just a short walk from the center of historic old Santa Fe. They host quite a few authors. Here I am with bookseller Adam Gates, a recent transplant from the east coast. :-)


OUR FIRST STRING OF HOTELS

So far on our trip, we’ve been fortunate to be able to stay in the houses of generous friends and family on all but one night. In Santa Fe, though, we started a string of evenings where we actually had to spring for hotels. :-( But the good news is that we’ve been running into terrific people wherever we’ve been. Here we are with Vince, Heidi, Nick and Sam Battelo of Redland, CA. We met Vince, Nick, and Sam at the Holiday Inn swimming pool. Nick took this underwater picture of Evan as he jumped into the pool. Way cool! Great to meet you, Battelo Family! :-)


YOUTH HOSTELING, CATS, AND A CHURCH-GOING BIKER GANG IN TAOS, NM

Just outside of Taos (which we loved!) we stayed overnight at a youth hostel called “The Abominable Snow Mansion.” It was warm so we had the window open. All night long a parade of cats kept walking in and out through the window, and I kept getting up to shoo them out. I’m allergic to cats. Lucy loved it, though. She has since said those cats were one of her favorite parts of our trip so far.

Staying with us at the hostel was a fun gang of bikers from the Ft. Worth, Texas area. Here we are with Dwight Wilson, Scott Dishnow, Malcom “The Dukester” Duke, Craig Bearden, Jeff McDonald, and Noel Yandell. They told us they are all from the same Sunday school.


MOBY DICKENS
Taos is the home of the fantastic Moby Dickens bookshop. In addition to having an excellent selection of new books, they also order and research rare and out of print books. Another draw to the store is Ruby the Cat, who appeared at the store’s door in 1995 and has lived there ever since. Ruby apparently has a slew of fans who visit the store just to see her. Here I am with Mary Raskin, Carole Vollmer, Elizabeth Shuler, and Susan Hilliker. I didn’t catch the name of the gorilla. :-)


LIVING THE ARTIST'S LIFE IN COSTILLAS, NM

KAREN: On our way from Taos to Denver we stopped by to meet Linda Louden a friend of my cousins Bernie and Liz of NYC. Linda is an artist who dropped everything in her high-flying New York life to move to a one-bedroom white adobe house in Costillas, NM with her dog Daisy. Now in her backyard she has a re-vamped trailer that she converted into a studio. When you walk into her house you feel an immediate sense of tranquility, and she is surrounded by her art and the art of her friends. There is nothing in the town except for a few houses…it made me appreciate Georgia O’Keefe’s reasoning to go into the New Mexico Desert to create art. Here we are with Linda, who gave us osha, a new Mexican root that is rumored to heal just about anything, and some hot cheese & jalapeno bagels. Thanks Linda! You are an inspiration!




UPS AND DOWNS IN THE MOUNTAINS OF COLORADO

MARK: By two days ago, when we came to Colorado, we’d been traveling for 22 days. We passed the 5,000 mile mark in Denver—which is why I upgraded my total-mileage estimation from 9,000 to 13,000. I think that’s why yesterday we all seemed to crash a little. We were tired. We needed a down-day. We’ve recovered now, but our little dip in energy meant that we didn’t do full justice to Denver. I’m sure it’s a lovely city – and what little that we saw of it (see below) was very nice – but we definitely benefitted from lazing around the hotel room and staring at the boob-tube. All better now. :-)

OBSERVATIONS ON TRAVELING IN THE LEMONADE MOUTH VAN WITH THREE KIDS

A yellow van that says “Lemonade Mouth” in big, bold letters seems to sometimes confuse passers-by. Here’s a guy in Denver who came over to ask if we had any lemonade for sale.


Sorry, overheated Denver guy. No actual lemonade here.

BTW: We’ve christened the car Penelope.

Another thing, we’ve been seeing so many amazing sights for so many days now that I think the kids are starting to get a little jaded. Example from this morning: “Look, Lucy! Have you ever seen such an interesting-looking bridge? I know I never have!” Lucy momentarily glances up from her Barbie laptop and in a bored singsong monotone says, “Whoah. That certainly is an interesting bridge.” Then back to Barbie.

As I type, we’re still driving through the Colorado mountains toward Utah. I’ll ask the kids what was their favorite part of the trip so far and report it here. Here are their answers:

LUCY: When the kittens slept with me. (MARK: That was at the youth hostel in Taos, NM).

ZOE (Note that she and I only speak to each other in Spanish): ?Te acuerdas el caballo mecanico? (MARK: Translation – “Do you remember the mechanical horse?” She’s talking about a horse ride in the center of Taos, one of those rides for little kids where you put a quarter in the slot and the horse rocks back and forth for a minute or so. I wish I’d taken a picture. She really did love it.

EVAN: Burger Beach in Fort Worth. Remember? The big pool with all the diving boards and swings?

Okay, so not exactly the o-beautiful-for-spacious-skies answers Karen and I were hoping for. Still, I know that they really have enjoyed themselves so far. We all have. And they’ll always remember this long road-trip discovering America with their family. At least that’s what Karen and I keep telling ourselves. :-)

THE TATTERED COVER

No book-lover's trip to Denver would be complete without a pilgrimage to The Tattered Cover. It's the second largest independent bookstore in the country. And it is huge. Sidney Jackson and Judy Bulow and met us and showed us around. Their Colfax Street location is in an old building that used to be a theater, and it still has the curtain, the lobby, the orchestra pit, etc. It’s way cool. Here I am with Sidney. Thanks, Tattered Cover!

THE BOOKIES

The Bookies is a smaller but absolutely amazing bookstore away from the center of town. They specialize in books for kids and also teacher resources. Karen is a high school Spanish teacher, so she immediately got absorbed by the Spanish teaching resources and ended up buying a pile of loot. Here I am with Suzi Fischer, Vicki Hellman, and Mary Lou Steenrod. Such nice people!


HOTEL FROM HELL
Our hotel in Denver wasn’t that great. It was cramped, one of the beds actually broke when we sat down on it, and the TV didn’t work very well. Then as a final farewell just as we left, the toilet overflowed and ran out all over the floor. Lovely.

Goodbye, gushing toilet from the Hotel from Hell! :-)

THE BOULDER BOOKSTORE

This morning we went to The Boulder Bookstore, another big independent that makes you want to lose yourself in its many comfy, shelf-lined rooms. Arsen Kashkashian met us and was very kind. Tonight is the big release-party for Harry Potter 7, and the Boulder Bookstore is having live owls, an actual wizard, and a lot of other fun stuff including this gigantic papier mache sorting hat!



TAJIKISTANI TEA WITH LUCY

While Evan, Zoe, and I went to fetch the car from our distant parking spot, Karen and Lucy had tea at The Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse, which is a big ‘ol fancy Tajikistani tea room in the middle of Boulder. Apparently the barista, Rama Kho, did magic tricks with Lucy and gave her a complimentary hibiscus flower tea.


TROUBADOR BOOKS
Troubador Books is a lovely independent bookstore outside of the center of Boulder. It specializes in new books and books on performing arts. Deb Evans and Julie Leonard really went out of their way for us, including providing lemonade and helping us figure out our route to Utah. It’s amazing how friendly booksellers can be! Here I am with Deb and Julie. Thanks, guys! :-)


HERE AND NOW

As I type, it’s 6:42 PM and we just got out of a lengthy traffic jam on Route 70 heading toward Grand Junction, CO. I took this photo of the Starbucks in the mountains because it seems very Colorado: half coffee-place, half camping store.


Next stop, Utah!

--Mark
LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007)
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
www.markpeterhughes.com

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Well, it’s May 1 today and that means April, National Poetry Month, is over. ☹ I’ve enjoyed posting daily for April and hope you’ve found some useful ideas and examples. But I also have mixed feelings about moving on, as if every other month of the year we can just ignore poetry. Although I may not be able to post daily, I will continue rolling with my efforts at promoting poetry for young people. I also welcome any suggestions for new poetry-related topics to consider. But for today, I thought I would share this cranky nugget from an essay by Charles Bernstein.

"As an alternative to National Poetry Month, I propose that we have an International Anti-Poetry month. As part of the activities, all verse in public places will be covered over—from the Statue of Liberty to the friezes on many of our government buildings. Poetry will be removed from radio and TV (just as it is during the other eleven months of the year). Parents will be asked not to read Mother Goose and other rimes to their children but only ... fiction. Religious institutions will have to forego reading verse passages from the liturgy and only prose translations of the Bible will recited, with hymns strictly banned. Ministers in the Black churches will be kindly requested to stop preaching. [The musical] "Cats" will be closed for the month by order of the Anti-Poetry Commission. Poetry readings will be replaced by self-help lectures. Love letters will have to be written only in expository paragraphs. Baseball will have to start its spring training in May. No vocal music will be played on the radio or sung in the concert halls. Children will have to stop playing all slapping and counting and singing games and stick to board games and football.”

What a great point about how poetry is both something special and something ordinary. I love the subversive notion of “banning” poetry as a way of making it an irresistible temptation. I also like the idea that poetry is an intrinsic part of language and life. Here’s one of my favorite poems to illustrate this very point.

You Enter A Poem. . .
By Robin Hirsch

You enter a poem
Just like you enter a room.
You open the door
And what do you see?
A sink, for example,
A bathtub, a toilet
(Does a toilet belong in a poem?)
And you say to yourself, "Aha!
It's a bathroom."

The next time you enter
You know it's a bathroom
And you notice
The towels on the rack
And their color,
The mirror, the tiles, the sofa
(What? There's a sofa? In the bathroom?)
And you say: "Aha!
It's that kind of a bathroom."

The third time you enter
You realize
One of the towels is frayed
There are streaks on the mirror
And the person who did the grouting
Messed up in that corner.
You open the drawers and the cabinets.
You empty them,
You take an inventory:
Toothbrushes, toothpaste, cotton balls, cleanser,
Toilet paper
(Does toilet paper belong in a poem?)
Not to mention
The child-proof bottles of pills--
Which you know of course how to open--
And you say to yourself: "Aha!
It's that kind of a
This is how you enter a
I'm beginning to know this
Poem."

Also in: Hirsch, Robin. 2002. FEG: Ridiculous Stupid Poems for Intelligent Children. New York: Little, Brown.

Picture credit: www.faucets-plus.com

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