Wednesday, August 17, 2011

"The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, And all the sweet serenity of books."~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  I was just talking with a friend of mine regarding her son's apprehension surrounding the new, exciting, and intimidating experiences awaiting his first day of middle school .  I was comforted to find that I am not the only forty-something who still suffers nightmares of forgetting my locker combination or being lost in the school hallway unable to find my classroom.

Afterwords Books celebrated back to school time with some appropriately themed books during last Saturday's story time.  The kids loved Jane Yolen's How Do Dinosaurs Go to School?, the misadventures of David in David Goes To School by David Shannon, and they met Pete the Cat rocking out in his new red school shoes in Eric Litwin's Pete the Cat:  Rocking in My School Shoes.  Each child happily took home a MELISSA & DOUG Learning Mat and a package of crayons.

We continue our love affair with MELISSA & DOUG and are currently running two promotions.  We still have lots of great puppets and are offering a buy one puppet and choose a second puppet or any other MELISSA & DOUG item of your choice at 50% off!  Additionally, we received 20 boxes courtesy of our kind UPS driver packed full of great MELISSA & DOUG art supplies this past week.  Let me take a moment to tell all of you just how much I enjoy putting together the various displays you find in our store.  The tiny little plastic bags bulging with various size screws, washers, and nuts are enough to send me into a panic attack, but the new display looks great and you should most definitely stop by to marvel at my skills with a Phillips screwdriver.  We have copious amounts of crayons, paint brushes, poster paint, water color paint sets, finger paints, rainbow stamp pads, quality construction, drawing, finger painting, origami, and easel paper, chalk, erasers, colored pencils, markers,  scissors, glue sticks, dry erase markers, smocks, and more! Buy two art supply items of your choice and receive a third for FREE while supplies last.


Thank you to one of our loyal customers, Doug Tull, for his suggestion of a New Arrivals section for our regular customers to peruse.  Now when you visit the store and inquire, "Did you get anything new this week?" you will be thrilled to find that we have showcased all books that were brought in for Trade for Credit during that past week and we will continue to rotate this stock accordingly.  You do know about our Trade for Credit policy, right??  We offer our customers 20% of the list price of gently owned books in store credit that can be applied toward the purchase of used products throughout the store.  You can read more about our policy here.


Finally, NPR recently surveyed it's readers to generate a Top 100 Science Fiction, Fantasy Books compilation and I'm happy to report that one of my all time favorite books, Cormac McCarthy's The Road, made it to the list.  The top ten titles inspired us to pull from our shelves and prominently display these great reads in our window, right above the sidewalk bins overflowing with over 100 FREE titles.  We're often incredulously asked, "Are these really free?"   Yes, they are really free.  


As we say our bittersweet farewell to summer in a few more weeks and welcome the crunchy leaves of Autumn, we wish happy back-to-school memories to one and all.