How to use this Page

What a fun and exhausting weekend we had in Anaheim, meeting up with old and new friends to discuss future plans for Stone Arch Books. As busy as it was, the real buzz was in our booth! Of course the fact that we have safe graphic novels continues to draw attention. A well-known graphic novel illustrator told us that his son searches for our “Safe Graphic Novel” symbol to find graphic novels that are as cool as the books Dad creates and wholly accessible for younger readers. Maybe someday Dad will illustrate a graphic novel for SAB!

Another hot topic in our booth was our new We Are Heroes series. Everyone wants to show kids how to be active in their communities and be good citizens. These books show how kids can get involved. Several librarians were especially happy to see that all the proceeds from our book Kids Against Hunger are going to the Kids Against Hunger organization. We’re excited that educators can use our books to show kids that they can influence their communities and at the same time, the proceeds will directly benefit an admirable community activity.

Watch for photos of our Newbery Dinner table, coming next week!


--Maryellen Gregoire
Director of Product Planning and Public Relations, Stone Arch Books

Add a Comment

Well, we made it back from ALA Midwinter! Conventions are always so busy and so exhilarating. I spent breakfasts, lunches, and dinners with librarians this year, and what a wonderful group of people! Those who know our books know what they want from them.

Our breakfast on Saturday was with a couple of librarians . . . and I mean a couple! Malcolm and Martha Fick are librarians who once worked in the technology industry, but have come back to the school library with enthusiasm. Martha works at Moorestown Upper Elementary School in Moorestown, NJ, and her students love our Jake Maddox series. On her website, she uses icons to make searching for books easier. She has added our logo to help her students find our books quickly. Seems like a good idea to me!

Malcolm, who is a librarian at Willingboro Memorial Upper Elementary School in Willingboro, NJ, has very little budget to work with, but has a group of kids that could really use our books. He’s still experimenting, but we’re sure he’ll get his kids hooked on Stone Arch Books too! We gave him a few books to get his SAB collection started.

Saturday night dinner was with Diane Chen and her fellow librarians from Tennessee. What a hoot! We laughed all night.

You can see Joan and me in the picture with our friends Kathleen Baxter, author of the Gotcha books and SLJ columnist (“The Non-Fiction Booktalker”), and Deborah Ford, BER presenter (and author!). We just like hanging out at the booth with them. They always have good advice about our products.

My last visit of the weekend was with Dr. Sylvia Vardell from Texas Women’s University. She is such a wonderful mentor for me. She advised me on what part of librarianship would be appropriate for me to study (I’m starting classes this semester at The College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, MN). Dr. Vardell was on the very first ALSC/Booklist/YALSA Odyssey Award for Excellence in Audiobook Production Selection Committee. She had great things to say about the committee and its chair, Mary Burkey.

All in all, it was a great weekend—and I even made it to see the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps like I’d hoped to.


--Maryellen Gregoire
Director of Product Planning and Public Relations, Stone Arch Books

Add a Comment

This Friday, we’re off to ALA Midwinter! Joan Berge, Michaela DeLong, and I are representing Stone Arch Books.

The fun thing about our booth (we're in #758) is that for the first time, we are physically adjacent to our sister companies, and we're also communicating that we are all from Capstone Publishers! You’ll definitely notice it with the carpeting and the signage. We did something similar at AASL and it looked great!

On Friday night, come visit our booth and sign up for the sports basket, part of the raffle sponsored by ALA. The drawing for the basket is on Friday night around 7:00. Winners will be announced over the loudspeaker in the exhibit hall. We’re handing out cool Library of Doom posters, too! They’re printed on both sides . . . perfect for windows!

I’m hoping to find some time to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The steps, made famous in the "Rocky" movies, were built with stone from Mankato Stone Company, part of Coughlan Companies (our parent company). After hearing about it for so many years, I can’t wait to see those famous steps in person!

When you come to the booth, make sure you mention this blog and we’ll give you a Library of Doom book signed by the author, Michael Dahl (while supplies last). See you at booth #758.

Hope to see you there!


--Maryellen Gregoire
Director of Product Planning and Public Relations, Stone Arch Books

Add a Comment

by Richard Back
photographs by Russel Munson
Macmillan 1970

Is this a book for children?

I received this book as a gift when I was a boy, I believe as a birthday present, possibly from a family friend who was also a librarian. I might have been twelve, the memory is hazy, but I didn't remember reading it.

So I read it.

Jonathan is a seagull unlike the others in that he would prefer to perfect and test the limits of flying over scrounging for food and fighting among the flock. His unique spirit and singular focus upsets the elders in the flock and as he reaches the physical limits of his speed diving experiments he is cast out of the flock.

Free of his societal constraints he flies off alone, only to be joined by two ethereal gulls who guide him to another place, a place where he will be understood and embraced.

"So this is heaven," Jonathan thinks, having found the home of gulls who have freed themselves of weight of the physical world. He meets another gull named Sullivan who becomes his flight instructor and guide, showing him the levels of perfection he had previously only dreamed of. Quickly Jonathan learns and surpasses his instructor to the point where he is introduced to the new flock's elder, a gull named Chiang. Chiang may be the eldest but he has so perfected his abilities that he can actually transport himself through time and space without flight, the ultimate in enlightenment. He takes on Jonathan as his pupil and in short order Jonathan has become a master in his own right.

Because he is still young and idealistic Jonathan decides that mastering flight isn't enough, that he hears a higher calling. Despite the confusion of his new flock he decides to return to the old world, to his old flock, and to show them the way and the light. The elders of his old flock are not impressed and insist that those who even speak with Jonathan will themselves be outcast. But Johnathan's message and abilities are too powerful and soon he has taken on disciples and begun to teach him what he knows. They even go so far as to call him the Son of the Great Gull. Once his followers have all the knowledge he could impart Jonathan turns the teaching over to them, to spread the word and continue to seek out a life without limits.

Wow. What a mess. Who gives this kind of a book to a boy, and what are they expecting from him when they give it?

I'm glad I never read it then, or abandoned it, or whatever I did to block it from my mind. The story is a mess of theologies, a veritable smorgasbord of free-wheeling 70's pop-psych and religious cherry-picking. Jonathan's aesthetic of flight-for-flight's-sake reads a bit like a zen novice attempting to reach nirvana the hard way. Shut out of society, he takes the mythological night journey to the shaman flock where he is given rudimentary training in preparation for (or as prerequisite to) meeting his master. The master finds Jonathan an eager student and puts him through his paces toward total enlightenment. But like Jesus learning at the feet of the Eastern ascetics he realizes that his people need to be guided from their darkness more than his own needs and returns to become their rabbi. In time he has gathered his disciples (including a lone female gull) and, his lessons finished, leaves them to explore the possibilities of an enlightened existence.

There's just enough ideas strewn throughout to suggest that Bach might have been trying to appease all crowds. Depending on the reader's personal philosophies one could find some sort of comfort in the message. The outsider as the ultimate insider, the spiritual found in the purity of action, the student becoming the master... all that was missing was a true Death and Resurrection Show to make the shaman's circle complete.

This was another one of those 25 cent library sale finds that also qualifies as a part of rebuilding my childhood library, which becomes my justification for dropping a quarter. I am forever in love with libraries for any number of reasons, but rebuilding my own childhood library from their detritus has been one of the best.

I'm glad I finally read this, and I am probably the right age for it now. Back when I was twelve I probably wrote it off as a stupid book about a seagull. I know it was a hugely popular book when it came out and that every household had an obligatory copy (ours sat next to some of my mom's collections of Rod McKuen poetry) I only wonder what it was about me that caused someone to think I would have enjoyed it.

Add a Comment