Lyn Slater's Book Signing News Coverage

Thank you to local news maven (and author!) Janine Annett for covering our book signing with Lyn Slater, the Accidental Icon last Friday. The article appeared in Janine’s new substack Rivertowns Current and was also picked up by The Hudson Independent.

Author with Roots in Dobbs Ferry Puts New Spin on "How to Be Old" by Rivertowns Current

"Accidental Icon" Lyn Slater, 70, takes a positive approach to aging

Read on Substack

DOBBS FERRY

Author with Roots in Dobbs Ferry Puts New Spin on "How to Be Old"

"Accidental Icon" Lyn Slater, 70, takes a positive approach to aging

MAY 12, 2024

by Janine Annett

Dobbs Ferry — In a world where many women hesitate to reveal their age, Lyn Slater is a breath of fresh air. At 70, she’s upending preconceived notions of what it means to be a septuagenarian woman in her new book,  How to Be Old: Lessons in Living Boldy from the Accidental Icon.

A cultural influencer, model, writer, content creator, and former professor, Slater became an “accidental icon” at age 61, when she started a fashion blog by that name. Soon after, Slater took social media by storm, acquiring more than half a million followers on Instagram and nearly a million followers across all platforms.

Slater turned to fashion blogging after she couldn’t find any websites or magazines that spoke to her, offering an “urban, modern, intellectual aesthetic” aimed at women who live “interesting but ordinary lives” and are “smart, creative, fashion forward, fit, thoughtful, engaged, related, and, most importantly, clear and comfortable with who they are," she states on her website.

 “The year I turned 59, I couldn’t find anything to wear,” Slater writes in How to Be Old. “Everything that hung in my closet or on racks in stores no longer inspired.” In the book’s prologue, Slater shares that her own mother lived until 95.

The author goes on to discuss the ups and downs of reinventing herself, and challenges readers to live boldly at any age and think about aging and fashion and beauty standards in new ways.

In March, Slater celebrated the release of her book with an appearance at the New York Public Library, where she was in conversation with New York Times writer and author Chloé Cooper Jones.

At a recent appearance at Picture Book, the pop-up bookstore inside the co-working space HudCo in Dobbs Ferry, Slater chatted amiably with visitors and signed copies of How to Be Old for fans of all ages.

Not only did Slater grow up in Dobbs Ferry, she has strong connections to Hastings as well. “That’s where my mother lived as a child, and at the end of her life, she lived at Andrus [nursing home]. My brother-in-law also grew up in Hastings,” Slater told the Rivertowns Current. For high school, Slater attended Our Lady of Victory Academy, at 565 Broadway in Dobbs Ferry (now the site of Mercy University) which closed in 2011.

Slater currently lives in Peekskill and writes a column for the Peekskill Herald called “How to be Old in Peekskill.”

Rivertowns Current is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Mother's Day Gift Guide May 2024

Here are a few recommendations for treating the moms in your life.

FOR THE BRAND NEW MOM

Probably not the time to get her a long involved novel. This mom needs sleep, appreciation, and good maternity leave policies. Give her something sentimental or humorous that works with her attention span.

How to Baby: A No-Advice-Given Guide to Motherhood, with Drawings by Liana Finck is a wryly personal and deeply relatable graphic memoir for grownups skewering the "traditional" parenting book to chronicle the absurdities, frustrations, and soaring joys of new parenthood—from the acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist and author. It is THE book to help moms feel seen, and to help find the humor in the hardships.

You Broke It! is a picture book also by the acclaimed New Yorker cartoonist Liana Finck. This collection of classic parental nags are cleverly betrayed by the situations shown, in which it's made clear that the child knows better. Each scenario is worthy of a giggle, adding a lightheartedness to the inevitable dynamics between parents and children.

FOR THE MOM WHO IS A GRANDMA

More Books For MOMS

Event Photos: Becky Pitts' Book Signing

I was so delighted to host a book signing for Becky Pitts debut book Jane Jacobs: Champion of Cities, Champion of People in November 2023. It’s the first biography for young people on Jane Jacobs, the visionary activist, urbanist, and thinker who transformed the way we inhabit and develop our cities. The photos below capture just some of the community who came out to congratulate the author at the signing.

The first week of May is Jane Jacobs Walk week which is a series of free neighborhood walking, biking, and transit tours that help put people in touch with their environment and with the people who live in their community. Becky will be dropping off some cool pins to go with the signed copies of her book in celebration, so if you missed the original launch event it is another great time to stop by!

Independent Bookstore Day Online Deals

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.

 

Event Photos: Jesse Kanzer's Book Signing for Unlocking Your Inner Zelensky

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.

Spring's New Books

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.



VIEW ALL SPRING RELEASES ON BOOKSHOP

Women's History Month

Pick up a great read this Women’s History Month

PICTURE BOOKS

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

ART BOOKS

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

New Releases - March 2024

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

February's New Releases

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:

Alphabetical Diaries

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.

Wandering Stars

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

Couplets

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. 

The Book of Love

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

Black History Month

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.

NON-FICTION

FOR KIDS

Find more Black History themed books for kids on Bookshop.org, many titles are eligible for 15% off with code BHM24

BLACK ARTISTS

Find more beautiful monographs on Black Contemporary Artists on Bookshop.org

NEW FICTION BY BLACK AUTHORS

MORE KIDS BOOKS WITH BLACK MAIN CHARActers

Find more on Bookshop.org, many titles are eligible for 15% off with code BHM24

Read My Valentine

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 Today -Come & Get It!

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

Dorm Room Revelations as Microcosms of a Culture

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.

Event Photos: Happy Plants, Happy You with Kamili Bell Hill

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.

January's New Releases

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

2023 Year in Review

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!

BESTSELLING BOOKS of 2023

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

BestSELLING PICTURE BOOKS

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

BESTSELLING FICTION

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

Still need a gift for a book lover?

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!