Over on the Little Shop blog, Dave tells the story of how “Pete the Cat’: I Love My White Shoes” went from a local sensation to getting picked up by none other than Harper Collins.  Pretty sweet story!

Eric Litwin, a local storyteller and musician, had an idea for a children’s book starring Pete the Cat. A chance random meeting with James Dean, a local artist and creator of Pete, started the collaboration. Eric and James put the book together and published it themselves. Amazingly successful, the first printing sold out. Outrageously successful, the even bigger second printing also sold out.

In the meantime, multiple big time publishers began knocking on their doors.

Read the rest of the tale over on the Little Shop blog.

The Decatur bookstore will host a book release party for Dean and Litwin this Saturday, March 6th at 7pm.

Disclosure: Little Shop of Stories is a DM sponsor.

Beautiful wands for sale, for a good cause!  Audrey sends in this announcement…

Haiti needs a little magic.

A group of 3rd graders from Winnona Park Elementary have made some beautiful wizard and fairy wands and will be selling them on Saturday Feb 6th in front of Little Shop of Stories starting at noon. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to help Haiti. The wands will be $10 each.

Agnes Scott College, Little Shop of Stories and Daren Wang all have reason to be yelling “Squeeeee!” this week.

In an extensive article profiling the prolific, counter-culture, superstar author Neil Gaiman, all three Decatur institutions found themselves mentioned in the latest issue of the New Yorker.  After detailing Gaiman’s life-story and his unique fan-base in an elegant journalistic style , the article closes with Gaiman’s December trip to Decatur.

In December, Gaiman flew to Decatur, Georgia, the location of Little Shop of Stories, which he had picked as a winner of the contest. In tribute to “The Graveyard Book,” the store had transformed its basement into a crypt and led the children in a danse macabre, beating out a store in Larchmont, New York, that had brought in a live white pony, in honor of the preferred conveyance of the novel’s death figure.

It was a foggy day, with intermittent rain, and people started lining up before noon outside Agnes Scott College, which was hosting the event. The reading started at six.

Little Shop announced the news yesterday in a post on their blog, while Mr. Wang had a bit of an identity crisis over on Verb.

More great press for the little city of growing book fame!

UPDATE: Little Shop’s “Thank You” note to Neil can be found here.

Paula is good enough to provide a recap to last night’s Little Shop Neil Gaiman event.  (The AJC’s Jamie Gumbrecht reported on the event too.)

Report your own experiences in the comments below. If you have photos from the event, send ‘em in and I will post!

Just wanted to give a quick report on the Gaiman event last night. First of all, I am so incredibly proud of Little Shop of Stories. They did a great job all around – they put on a winning Graveyard Book Party, distributed a limited number of tickets in a fair and equitable manner, and did a great job corralling 1000+ anxious and cold Gaiman fans last night.

Read the rest of this entry »

The Little Shop blog has burped up more details about the “at least 100″ remaining tickets to the Neil Gaiman event on December 14th.

Unlike the previous set, some of these tickets will be available by phone, though it sounds like the rule for those is the same as the in-person tickets; essentially one person, one ticket. So, unless you’re looking to brave the Gaiman hordes alone, you better get your companion on the extension before Dave or one of the other Little Shop employees politely hangs up on your rapid explanatory sputtering.

Also, the shop is announcing a satellite, “overflow” location for the event, where Johnny-Comes can view the event going on in Presser Hall live.  But you’ll need tickets for that too.

To get the official, non-summarized scoop, jump over to the Little Blog.

The Little Shop blog reports a 99 person line had formed in front of the store prior to opening yesterday as the bookstore gave out all but 100 tickets for the Niel Gaiman event on December 14th at 6pm.

As for those 100 remaining tickets, the store is reconsidering how they will be distributed.  Jump over to their site for more detail.

I wonder if the Brick Store provided 99 bottles of beer for those in line…sorry, I thought I’d just throw myself on the lame joke sword before someone else did.

If you’re going to have any chance of snagging free tickets to Little Shop’s Neil Gaiman event at ASC’s Presser Hall on December 14th at 6pm, you better read this post right now.

And yes, Gaiman will be signing books – but only one per person. Actually it’s two person, but only if one is purchased at Little Shop!

On its blog, Little Shop of Stories announces that with the help of a bunch of local sponsors, the bookstore is bringing the Decatur Christmas Tree back to the Square!

The tree will sit on top of our building, so you’ll be able to see it from the square and from Ponce all holiday long. And what would a tree be with out a tree-lighting party? So come out and join us as we kick off the season (and my favorite time of year) on Thursday, December 3 at 7 pm.

Click over to the Shop’s blog for more details!

Photo Courtesy of Neil Gaiman’s website

It’s no secret that Decatur has lusted after fantasy/sci-fi rockstar writer Neil Gaiman for a good, long while.

This past year, the Decatur Book Festival went out of its way to get Gaiman’s attention, urging festival-goers to sign an online petition to get Gaiman as a keynote speaker.  Unfortunately, the process was “cumbersome” – according to Daren Wang – and it wasn’t enough to get Gaiman inside the city limits.

But while Decatur Gaiman-ites were disappointed, they certainly were not defeated.

Only a few weeks ago, Little Shop of Stories heard Gaiman’s challenge to bookstores: throw the best damn Halloween party in the country, and he would reward them with a visit.

And so in true Henry V style, Little Shop picked up the DBF’s fallen banner and declared to the world…

We tried our darnest to get Neil Gaiman to come to the AJC Decatur Book Festival this year. There was an e-mail campaign. We contacted people we knew at Harper Collins. We begged. We failed.

…So we’re doing it. Friday night. October 30th. On the Eve of All Hallows Eve. 7pm

There are some 35 other bookstores in North America also competing for Neil’s affections. (You can click here to look at the entire list on this map.) But ours will be best because, after all, this is Decatur.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

OK, maybe I added that last line, but you get the idea.

And throw a Halloween party they did.

Well hell if that “little” bookstore didn’t just go and win the whole damn contest!

To get the info straight from the horse’s mouth, jump over to The Little Shop blog.  Details like date and time will be announced later this week!

UPDATE: Daren Wang reports that Gaiman will be at Little Shop on December 14th.

After recently relocated to downtown Decatur, Amy writes in with news that her husband, Van Jensen, has just released his first graphic novel, “Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer”!

Looks like Publishers Weekly is already a big fan…

…although he’s no Buffy Summers, as a vampire fighter Pinocchio has the advantage of a built-in wooden stake—as long as he remembers to tell lies at the right time. Jensen’s script is clever, full of irreverent irony. But the highlight of the book is Higgins’s b&w art that offers page after page of amazement. Swirling, whirling, jittery, skittery, the story dances gracefully from grin to grimace and back again.

How does one get a copy of this bloody work of art?  Stop by Little Shop of Stories this Friday for a book-signing at 4pm.  And if you can’t make it, I’m sure the Little Shop folks can get a copy in your hands some how.

According to his blog, Jensen is already working on a sequel.  Virginia may be for lovers, but with our recent penchant for zombies and other dark monsters, Decatur could easily adopt “Decatur is for the Undead”.