This Independent Bookstore Day, we can celebrate our love for indie bookshops while also enjoying great deals! There is FREE SHIPPING all weekend on all Bookshop.org orders. Libro.fm is also offering tons of great audiobooks on mega sale!
Thank you for supporting my little independent bookshop year round. I put my whole heart into Picture Book and it means the world to me that you appreciate it too.
Back in October 2023, Picture Book was so delighted to host local author and friend Jessie Kanzer at the shop again for the release of her second book Unlocking Your Inner Zelensky: Lessons We Can All Learn from an Unexpected Leader. It was wonderful to see the community come out and support her and we captured some of the moments in the photo below. The sunflowers in honor of Ukraine were from Lemon Terrace and the cheese was of course from Bloomy.
I need to credit Jessie for helping me come up with this format of book signings during shop hours, which offer an intimate opportunity to meet and congratulate authors on their book releases. We’ve repeated the format since then for Rebecca Pitts, Lynn Schmeidler, Lan Phan, and the forthcoming signings for Alison Cupp Relyea, Lyn Slater, and hopefully many more!
Thank you to everyone who came out to show your support for Jessie and for my shop.
Here are Picture Book’s highlights of the most anticipated books coming out this Spring! Click the covers below to learn more about these books you’ll find featured in the shop, or click on the Bookshop.org link to shop the entire selection of exciting Spring releases.
Picture Book owner Sara and friend-of-the-bookstore, Stephanie, host an almost monthly book club at HudCo where we discuss literary fiction, mostly written by women, over drinks and Bloomy cheese. It’s a casual, cozy night at HudCo, and all are welcome to join!
Follow Picture Book on Instagram and sign up for the mailing list to make sure you are in the loop on our next meeting.
THIS MONTH’S BOOK CLUB PICK IS
THE MORNINGSIDE BY BY TÉA OBREHT
From the critically beloved, New York Times bestselling author of The Tiger's Wife and Inland, The Morningside is a sweeping novel of mothers and daughters, displacement and belonging, and wondrous tales of a world both fallen and new.
Join Sara of Picture Book, and friend-of-the-bookstore Stephanie for a casual discussion on Tuesday May 21st at 8pm at HudCo.
The book is available to pick up in person at the shop Monday-Friday 9-5, on our website, and as an audiobook.
Pick up a great read this Women’s History Month
For further books on Women’s History for kids and to ship nationally, see the curated list on the Picture Book Bookshop..org site: Women’s History Month for Kids
We have even more books on women artists in the shop and in our archive, so please ask if you are looking for something special! For further books on Women’s History for kids and to ship nationally, see the curated list on the Picture Book Bookshop..org site: Great Women Artists
There are a whole bunch of wonderful books out this March.
Anita de Monte Laughs Last is the new novel from New York Times bestselling author Xochitl Gonzalez (Olga Dies Dreaming) delivers a mesmerizing novel about a first-generation Ivy League student who uncovers the genius work of a female artist decades after her suspicious death.
Half Lives is the new short story collection from local author Lynn Schmeidler. The author will be doing a signing at Picture Book Friday April 5th, with a talk the night before at the Dobbs Ferry Public Library. Pre-order the book now to pick up at the events.
Find ALL of March’s New Releases on our Bookshop.org page
Did you catch all of last month’s new releases highlighted on the blog?
Find all of Picture Book’s selection of this Winter’s new releases on our Bookshop.org page
Picture Book, Dobbs Ferry is in the elimination round for two categories in Westchester Magazine’s Best of Westchester Poll. My hope is that being included in as an option in this poll helps get the word out about my little shop, so thank you so much for nominating me! If you love Picture Book, please take the time to let people know by voting for me in this final round. There are lots of other Rivertown businesses included in this round, so it’s a great opportunity to show love for your favorite local spots. Thank you so much for your support! —Sara
February, a month of love and a month of Black History, is also a great month for books. Some highlights from this month’s releases include:
A little over a decade ago, Sheila Heti—the award-winning author of a string of modern classics including How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and Pure Colour—began looking back at the diaries she'd kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, "I hate him," for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herself—and The Self—in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged.
Alphabetical Diaries is the sublime and probing result—one that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed.
The Pulitzer Prize-finalist and author of the breakout bestseller There There ("Pure soaring beauty." New York Times Book Review) delivers Wandering Stars, a masterful follow-up to his already classic first novel. Extending his constellation of narratives into the past and future, Tommy Orange traces the legacies of the Sand Creek Massacre of 1864 and the Carlisle Indian Industrial School through three generations of a family in a story that is by turns shattering and wondrous.
"For the sake of knowing, of understanding, Wandering Stars blew my heart into a thousand pieces and put it all back together again. This is a masterwork that will not be forgotten, a masterwork that will forever be part of you." —Morgan Talty, bestselling author of Night of the Living Rez
Out in paperback this month in rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets by Maggie Millner chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are.
In the long-awaited debut novel from bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize finalist Kelly Link, three teenagers become pawns in a supernatural power struggle. The Book of Love showcases Kelly Link at the height of her powers, channeling potent magic and attuned to all varieties of love--from friendship to romance to abiding family ties--with her trademark compassion, wit, and literary derring-do. Readers will find joy (and a little terror) and an affirmation that love goes on, even when we cannot.
Find ALL of February’s New Releases on our Bookshop.org page
Did you catch all of last month’s new releases highlighted on the blog?
Find all of Picture Book’s selection of this Winter’s new releases on our Bookshop.org page
This February, Picture Book is featuring many of the important books on Black History. Keep in mind we also have all of these amazing titles (and more!) year-round too, not just during the shortest month of the year. Click on the covers below to learn more.
Find more Black History themed books for kids on Bookshop.org, many titles are eligible for 15% off with code BHM24
Find more beautiful monographs on Black Contemporary Artists on Bookshop.org
Find more on Bookshop.org, many titles are eligible for 15% off with code BHM24
February is the perfect time to show love with a book! As a treat to yourself, your bff, your kids, or your romantic partner, giving books is a beautiful love language. Some special highlights at Picture Book right now include Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy, an electrifying art book for your coffee table featuring photographers that photographers that explore love, desire and intimacy in all their complex and contradictory ways like Nan Goldin and Nobuyoshi Araki. Couplets: A Love Story, Maggie Millner’s captivating, seductive debut is a love story in poems that explores obsession, gender, identity, and the art and act of literary transformation. In rhyming couplets and prose vignettes, Couplets chronicles the strictures, structures, and pitfalls of relationships—the mirroring, the pleasing, the small jealousies and disappointments—and how the people we love can show us who we truly are. Click on the links below to shop and learn more about the books. And come check them out in person at Picture Book Monday-Friday and during our upcoming markets.
Find more ideas for great Valentine’s books to give your loves (little and big!) on Bookshop.org
Out January 30th from Kiley Reid, celebrated New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age, comes a fresh and provocative University story about a residential assistant and her messy entanglement with a visiting professor and three unruly students.
Come & Get It is a "sharp, edgy social novel. . . Reid has the very same obsessions she gives her character Agatha, and the guilty pleasure of the book is the way she nails the characters' speech styles, Southern accents, and behavior and her unerring choice of products and other accoutrements to surround them with. . . . Reid is a genius of mimicry and social observation." —Kirkus Reviews
FICTION
In her second novel, “Come and Get It,” Kiley Reid uses chatty college students to make substantive statements about consumerism.
By Julia May Jonas
Julia May Jonas is the author of “Vladimir.”
New York Times Jan. 29, 2024
Once I realized what Kiley Reid was up to, I started jotting down brand names. Papyrus, Ziploc, Zillow, Ikea, Amy’s, Red Vines, Lubriderm — these are just a smattering of the companies and products mentioned in the first few chapters of Reid’s second novel, “Come and Get It.”
Reid’s best-selling debut, “Such a Fun Age,” focused on tensions between a Black babysitter and a white mother in Philadelphia; it was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Now she turns her attention to a college campus in Fayetteville, Ark., where the story unfurls like a magic trick, its breeziness disguising an incisive and damning exploration of economics and ethics in America.
The book follows three characters: Agatha, a 37-year-old visiting professor at the University of Arkansas, who is recovering from a breakup that occurred, in part, because of different attitudes about money. Her research brings her to Millie, a 24-year-old Black R.A., who took a year off to help her sick mother and is now a senior, devoted to her job and intent on financial stability. And then there’s Kennedy, a transfer student fleeing a disgraceful incident that happened at her former college.
Reid is a social observer of the highest order, knowing exactly when a small detail or beat of dialogue will resonate beyond the confines of the scene. We first encounter Agatha when she interviews a trio of residents in Millie’s dorm. They are a recognizable type — oblivious young people convinced of their own daring and unique hilarity. One of the girls, wrapping herself in a blanket, compares herself to a refugee to the delight of her friends. It’s a testament to Reid’s gifts that, despite moments like this, she never judges her characters. Her world, like the real one, is populated by people whose shortsightedness lives alongside good intentions.
Agatha plans to talk with the young women about weddings, but instead becomes fascinated by their relationship with money. Eventually she sells slightly doctored versions of her interviews to Teen Vogue, changing the names of the girls and presenting their opinions in a kind of money diary. Then, to obtain more material, she returns to the dorm, where she pays Millie to allow her to eavesdrop on students. Millie is eager to make a down payment on a house, so every little bit helps — and her dogged pursuit of this goal allows her judgment to sway.
Kennedy is terrified of new relationships, and her primary forms of companionship are food, self-help books and an endless procession of sappy signs: This Must Be the Place, For Like Ever, Rise and Grind, Bloom Where You Are Planted. (A character sees this last one and jokingly mouths, “Racist.”) Kennedy’s foggy-brained pursuit of sentiment over meaning, of ideas about connection more than connection itself — and Reid’s gentle interrogation of both — provide some of the book’s bleakest truths.
With her perceptive eye and ear, Reid imbues her novel with the stuff, literally and figuratively, of life. Her characters define themselves by what they have consumed, what they covet and how they react to what other people have. Does Reid criticize them for it? Absolutely not. Her characters feel unique, often lovable — and always human. Money drives them in the way it drives us all, and that’s the beauty (and the terror) of Reid’s point. With her remarkable examination of American monoculture — from fast food to pop culture to handed-down ideals — she tells a story about economics that’s neither poverty porn nor finance fantasy. Instead, it’s about the hows and whys of everyday consumerism and the insidious toll it takes on our lives.
As I read “Come and Get It,” I found myself thinking of certain writers who have, over the years, elected themselves as “capital C” Chroniclers of contemporary America. With this book, Reid demonstrates that she deserves a place in the running.
I’m so grateful Kamili Bell Hill aka @plantblerd joined us last September at Picture Book to discuss her book Happy Plants, Happy You: A Plant-Care & Self-Care Guide for the Modern Houseplant Parent. January is a perfect time to pick up this book that shows how plant-care can be self-care. Kamili is a delight and it’s always wonderful to have a fellow book addict in the shop. Here are some photos from our time together. Make sure you are on the Picture Book mailing list so you don’t miss our next fun event.
Look out for these new books coming to Picture Book inside HudCo in January! The most anticipated new releases of January 2024 include Come & Get It, the latest novel by Kiley Reid, author of Such a Fun Age; the picture book You Broke It! by New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck; the debut novel The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan which follows a woman caught up in espionage in Japanese occupied Malaya in 1945; a new art book on Jonas Wood; and the paperback of New York Times Top 10 Book of 2023 Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo. Click on the book covers for more information.
More new releases available in person or through Bookshop.org
Preview all the most-anticipated books this Winter on Bookshop.org
Thank you so much for sharing your reading life with me at Picture Book this past year! Here are some of the books that so many of you have loved. Click on the book covers to learn more.
Thank you for showing so much support for local authors, great books, and my small business!
1. Braving Creativity
2. Scandinavian from Scratch
3. Jane Jacobs
4. Everyday Snack Tray
5. B My Name Is Boy
6. Unlocking Your Inner Zelensky
7. 20 Questions
8. Hello Beautiful
9. Weather Together
10. Tom Lake
1. B My Name Is Boy
2. Twenty Questions
3. Weather Together
4. Something, Someday
5. Lila Greer, Teacher of the Year
6. Blurb’s Book of Manners
7. The Octopus Escapes
8. If I Was a Horse
9 Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Sleigh
10. Copydog
1. Hello Beautiful
2. Tom Lake
3. Lessons in Chemistry
4. I Have Some Questions for You
5. Demon Copperhead
6. Roman Stories
7. The Guest
8. Severance
9. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
10. The Postcard
Picture Book’s last day open before Christmas is Friday December 22nd from 9am to 5pm. There is still a very amply stocked selection of books to pick from (1,800 in total though all may not be on display at once) so you will have many specially picked options.
If you can’t make it in to the shop on the last day, there are several options for digital gift cards so that the book lover on your list can choose their own adventure.
PICTURE BOOK WEBSITE GIFT CARD
This is a great option fo a local book lover who likes to browse online. The gift certificate works for any book on the website and all purchases can be picked up at HudCo, or delivery within Hastings, Dobbs, & Irvington.
SQUARE IN-STORE GIFT CARD
This digital gift card is perfect for the local friend that loves to browse in the shop and can come in person to our HUdCo location Monday-Friday 9am-5pm, or attends the shop’s special events. I am happy to order in special requests for this gift card.
BOOKSHOP.ORG GIFT CARD
Bookshop.org is a B-Corp that handles direct nationwide shipping for independent bookstores. These gift cards go directly to Bookshop and can not be redeemed in person at Picture Book. It’s the perfect gift for a local bookstore lover who can’t make it into the shop easily during business hours
LIBRO.FM GIFT CARD
Gift a Libro.fm audiobook credit bundle instantly to anyone in the world and support us at the same time. You choose the credit bundle, your gift recipient picks their own audiobooks. Send your gift instantly or schedule your gift delivery It’s an eco-friendly gift with a low carbon footprint!
Today, Friday December 22nd, is the last day to pick up gifts here at Picture Book before Christmas, so please come on down before 5pm to collect your goodies! I’ve updated the gift guide below with new items that are still in stock for in person pick up today. We still have 1,800 books to choose from!
Local authors and local bookshop merch
I would love to help you find the perfect book for everyone on your list here at Picture Book! Browse and click on the ideas below and reach out to me at the shop or via email picturebookny@gmail.com for more personalized recommendations. To ensure a stress-free experience, please try to get all special orders in by December 13th to ensure they arrive in time for Christmas. Hanukkah presents should be ordered right away. Happy holidays! Sara
More board books are available on Bookshop.org
More Picture Books available at the shop and on Bookshop.org
More early reader chapter books, chapter books for 8-12, and graphic novels for 8-12 on Bookshop.org or shop all kids books in the store
More art books available in the shop and online at Bookshop.org
More cookbooks available in the shop and online at Bookshop.org
Local authors and local bookshop merch
Look out for these books new books coming to Picture Book inside HudCo in November
Preview all the most-anticipated books of the Fall on Bookshop.org
The Rivertowns Chamber of Commerce presents a ghastly gathering of historical haunts and local legends. Join us for an eerily entertaining evening filled with the ghostly tales as told by Ghastly Grinn, your trolley guide through the spine-chilling streets of Hastings-on-Hudson, Irvington, and Dobbs Ferry.
Picture Book will be open late inside HudCo with special spooky books for the occasion, and HudCo’s bar will be open. Tickets required for the trolley, but it’s free to browse the bookshop and open to all to imbibe inside HudCo.
Family Fun Tour - 4:30 pm, Ghostly Tours (12+) - 6:00 pm & 7:30 pm
PB Book Club is the relaxed meet up hosted by Sara of Picture Book and Stephanie of Parson Brown at HudCo. Our next selection is Tom Lake by beloved author Ann Patchett. Tom Lake is a novel about youthful love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. For a limited time, get the PB Book Club Bundle with the novel and the Parson Brown Candle, the signature scent of HudCo, as a discounted package. Book Club will meet on November 14th.
Tuesday October 24th, 12-2pm -Jessie Kanzer
Come celebrate local author Jessie Kanzer's new book release Unlocking Your Inner Zelensky: Lessons We Can All Learn from an Unexpected Leader. Books are available for purchase from Picture Book, and Jessie will be available to sign them on release day at the shop.
Friday November 3rd, 12-2pm - Rebecca Pitts
Rebecca Pitts new book Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People is out on October 31st! Books are available for purchase from Picture Book, and Becky will be available to sign them on Friday November 3rd at the shop.
Check out all the books from our talented Rivertown authors online.
Sta tuned for more great events in November, with local author/illustrator Heather Ross leading a workshop on Sunday November 5th during River Arts Studio Tour, and Frances Largeman-Roth, RDN’s new cookbook release.
Don’t miss the new October releases on the table at HudCo this month. Including the latest from cookbook queen Molly Baz, short stories from Jhumpa Lahiri, and the latest First Cat in Space graphic novel! Preview all the most-anticpated books of Fall on our Bookshop.org website.
Ending the newsletter with a quick note of gratitude to Picture Book’s community on the third (!!!) anniversary of the bookshop inside HudCo this month. I am so grateful for your support and to have gotten to know you all through books. -Sara
Find Picture Book inside
HudCo - Dobbs Ferry, NY
Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
& other special programming:
-Wednesday October 18th 9am-8pm
-Sunday November 5th, 11am-3pm
Coffee weekdays until 3pm
Pick-up also available at
Yellow Studio, Cross River, NY
Look out for these highly anticipated October’s releases at Picture Book this month!
10/3
Our Strangers: Stories From one of the most accomplished writers of our time comes another brilliant collection of short fiction. Artful, deft, and inventive; Lydia Davis’ newest collection of stories delves into topics ranging from marriage to tiny insects. These stories are a celebration of language and careful observation that once again confirms Davis’ sincere love and mastery of the form. Only available at independent bookstores like Picture Book and libraries, by request of the author.
In Begin Again, his first illustrated book created specifically for readers of all ages, Oliver Jeffers shares a very brief history of humanity and shares his dreams for where we go from here. A must-have for anyone who wants the next generation to inherit a world to be proud of--and a perfect gift to share with those you care about.
Let's Become Fungal!: Mycelium Teachings and the Arts: Based on Conversations with Indigenous Wisdom Keepers, Artists, Curators, Feminists offers teachings on collaboration, decoloniality, nonlinearity, toxicity, mobilization, biomimicry, death and being nonbinary, while also examining the world of fungi. Let’s Become Fungal! shows how fungi can inspire artists, collectives, organizations, educators, policymakers, designers, scientists, anthropologists, curators, urbanists, activists, gardeners, community leaders, farmers and others to become more fungal in their ways of working and being.
The First Cat in Space and the Soup of Doom (First Cat in Space #2) Award-winning creators Mac Barnett and Shawn Harris are back with the second volume in the bestselling The First Cat in Space graphic novel series! Secret tales of woe, hilarious new characters, and dangerous plans of sabotage will keep readers delighted and laughing until the thrilling climax.
Monica, the long-awaited new graphic novel from Daniel Clowes, author of Ghost World, is a genre-bending thriller from one of the defining voices of the genre. "Daniel Clowes is the rare cartoonist whose graphic novels become cultural events." —New York Magazine
Stacey's Mistake: A Graphic Novel (the Baby-Sitters Club #14) is a brand-new Baby-sitters Club graphic novel adapted by National Book Award finalist and Eisner-nominated cartoonist Ellen T. Crenshaw following the Baby-sitters Club visiting Stacy in New York City for the weekend. (Ages 8-12)
10/10
Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri is the first short story collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author and master of the form since her number one New York Times best seller Unaccustomed Earth. Rome--metropolis and monument, suspended between past and future, multi-faceted and metaphysical--is the protagonist, not the setting, of these nine stories. These are splendid, searching stories, written in Jhumpa Lahiri's adopted language of Italian and seamlessly translated by the author and by Knopf editor Todd Portnowitz.
Family Meal by Bryan Washington, the bestselling, award-winning author of Memorial and Lot, an irresistible, intimate novel about two young men, once best friends, whose lives collide again after a loss.
More Is More: Get Loose in the Kitchen by Molly Baz It's time to crank up the heat and lose the measuring spoons because the secret to cooking is hiding in one simple motto: MORE IS MORE. In her bestselling debut cookbook, Cook This Book, Molly Baz taught the cooking essentials and put her love for mortadella and dill on blast. In More Is More, she's teaching cooks how to level up their cooking, loosen up in front of that ripping hot pan, and seek deliciousness at all costs.More Is More is a philosophy that encourages more risk-taking, better intuition, fewer exact measurements, and a "don't stop 'til it tastes delicious" mentality.
The Puppets of Spelhorst is an original fairy tale by master storyteller Kate DiCamillo with enchanting illustrations by Julie Morstad, in which five puppets confront circumstances beyond their control with patience, cunning, and high spirits.
End of October:
Art in Flower: Finding Inspiration in Art and Nature shows how Lindsey Taylor creates stunning but achievable floral arrangements inspired by works of art, riffing on works by a diversity of artists across mediums, periods, and styles.
Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People by local author Rebecca Pitts is the first biography for young people of Jane Jacobs, the visionary activist, urbanist, and thinker who transformed the way we inhabit and develop our cities. (grade 7+)
Unlocking Your Inner Zelensky: Lessons We Can All Learn from an Unexpected Leader by local author Jessie Asya Kanzer examines the words of the leader of Ukraine as a spiritual leader for our times.
Preview all the most-anticipated releases this Fall on Picture Book’s Bookshop.org website
