Saturday, April 30, is Independent Bookstore Day (art: IndieBound) — and we suggest consulting our new, handy-dandy Summer Reading PDF that you can print and take with you to the store for book-recommendation reference. Independent Bookstore Day is a celebration near and dear to our hearts. Of course, we're big independent bookstore fans, but did you know several Horn Book editors and reviewers — as well as many of your favorite children's authors and illustrators — were/are your friendly neighborhood indie booksellers?

This year's celebration is a little bittersweet, as longtime Friend of the Horn Book Terri Schmitz is permanently closing her Children's Book Shop: "Greater Boston’s oldest independent children’s bookstore." Saturday is the last day to stop by Brookline Village, grab some deals, and profusely thank Terri, as we Horn Bookers did en masse earlier this week. 

In other dramatic local indie bookstore news: Papercuts in J.P., where our sweet Katie Bircher (at right) works, suffered damage this week when two cars (!) slammed into its front window; luckily, the store wasn't yet open and no one was hurt. You can visit the shop on Saturday and donate here. 

Last month Kitty and I visited All She Wrote Books in Somerville; read Five Questions with the store's owner and founder Christina Pascucci Ciampa.  

The Boston area is loaded with excellent indies! (And we hear through the grapevine that Hummingbird Books is opening soon.) Lots more by and about some of our favorite local -- and not-so-local -- bookshops:

• "Books beyond buildings: Support your local bookstore and library!" by Cynthia K. Ritter and Shoshana Flax
• "A Family Affair: Connecting Community to Books" by Monique Harris and Nicholl Montgomery (2019) about Frugal Bookstore, the only Black-owned bookstore in Boston
• "Judging a Book by Its Cover (Because Sometimes That’s All We Get): What Makes a Good Bookstore Book?" by Terri Schmitz (2006)
• Peter H. Reynolds's and Jeff Kinney's Talks with Roger interviews
• "Shelf Lives: From Bookseller to Bestseller" by Abby McGanney Nolan (2016). Grace Lin, Julia Denos and E. B. Goodale, Leo Landry, and Amy Cherrix are a few others in this camp!
• "When Pigs Fly: The Improbable Dream of Bookselling in a Digital Age" by Elizabeth Bluemle (2013)
• "The Big Apple of Bookstores" by Shoshana Flax (2016)
• Reviews of No Crystal Stair: A Documentary Novel of the Life and Work of Lewis Michaux, Harlem Bookseller and The Book Itch: Freedom, Truth & Harlem’s Greatest Bookstore by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson, illus. by R. Gregory Christie
• "Foreign Correspondence: The Little Bookroom" by Margaret Robson Kett (2017)
• "A Children’s Bookshop in New Zealand: One Family’s Enterprise" by Dorothy Butler (1977)
• "Virtual bookstore events" by Cynthia K. Ritter
• "Somewhere over the..." by Elissa Gershowitz