1) The Heart and the Bottle

Oliver Jeffers is mostly known for his sweetly adventurous Boy and Penguin (and occasionally alien) stories. This book about a girl who deals with grief in a real and recognizable way, is utterly without peer in children's literature. The relationship that exists between the girl and her father, who one day is suddenly, permanently, absent, is fully realized. His empty chair is physically startling, and more than one reader has found themselves unable to breathe fully until the very end of the book, when the heart is still hurting, but is back where it belongs.

What is, in other hands, merely pithy and tidy, becomes profound and challenging in Jeffers's hands. His images are stark in the bleak places and filled with impossibility in the rich ones.

I absolutely love reading this book. It isn't long, and it doesn't have a ton of story, and it gets me feeling emotions that are not generally part of my everyday, and I could love it for that alone. Happily, it is also filled with amazing imagery and was a large boost in my learning curve for children's books.

They are so infinitely possible, these books. Anyone who taps into that infinity is creating something timeless and good.

I mean, don't touch the heart, please, but still

I first read this book not long before Oliver Jeffers visited St. Louis on his book tour for This Moose Belongs to Me and getting it signed was the very first time that I was utterly incapable of speaking sense to an author. 

What was going to happen out of my mouth: "Your books have become favorites at Storytime. I really appreciate the development of friendships in them. Are you working on anything else at the moment? Thank you so much for signing my book." 

You know. Like a person.

What happened instead: "Could you sign it to Jonesey? That's not my real name! My parents didn't name me that! Jones isn't even my last name! OMIGOSH THANK YOU SO MUCH BYE!"

I may have scream/whispered my undying love at him while running away. 

Very politely and with no intention of ever saying the words at him on account of married. But still.

Conversation over the stack of books that he signed for stock after his talk a few hours later was much more in line with adults in the same industry. He is extremely good at the visiting author/artist thing, and I'm pleased that I got to work that event. Sort of getting house points back kind of thing.

Because Sometimes Beautiful Moments Happen (from May 31st)

50 before the end of my shift yesterday, a guy came up to the counter with a question. He was looking for "something like" The Giving Tree.

"Something like" can encompass multitudes, so you have to ask follow-up questions. 1) Were you looking for a children's book? Yeah. Yeah, that would work. 2) What is it about The Giving Tree that you are looking for? Well, I'm going to use it for a proposal, so I want a story about life-long love.

Bastard.

The first books I could think of (Lost and Found & Up and Down by Oliver Jeffers) weren't in the store, so I offered him a paperback of Toot & Puddle: Top of the World by Holly Hobbie which wasn't going to be right, but it's a bookseller tactic - buys me a few minutes to look like an idiot staring at spines for inspiration. Because nothing inspires confidence like a slack-jawed bookseller deep in the fugue state of Finding Exactly the Right Book. It's a look. It's not a good look.

As I handed over The Adventures of Beekle the Unimaginary Friend by Dan Santat, I was hoping that this was the kind of couple this book would work for. It's about an imaginary friend who has to leave imaginary land and brave all sorts of new worlds and a certain amount of loneliness to find his real friend (who has been waiting for him in her own watchful way). I teared up telling him about it. Which didn't happen when I read this at Storytime. Different audience. Different perspective.

He read. I went back to looking. Registered that we have a lot of books about making friends, and being yourself and adventures and family and travel and dinosaurs, but not so many about life-long friendships (except for the ones about loved ones dying that we can't read because crying at work is a thing).

"This might do it," I heard and walked over to see him holding the book and wiping his eyes. "This is exactly our story."

We're both crying at the bookstore.

I hope his beloved says yes.

Added thought: I first thought of How to Catch a Star, my co-workers thought of Stuck and Lost and Found and The Heart in the Bottle. Left Bank Books booksellers think of Oliver Jeffers when we think of life-long love.