Okay, I added the “yourself” part, ’cause why should kids have all the fun on National Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day? This Saturday, December 5, run, walk, drive, bike, take the bus or subway or a rickshaw, but get yourself to your favorite bookstore, a REAL bookstore made of, and filled with, REAL materials of bricks and mortar and wood and paper. The only “virtual” things on the premises of these stores are the dreams their books kindle in children’s heads. And I do mean kindle, not Kindle.

Could there be a better National Day, especially in this terrible season of random violence? Books + Children = Hope. I can’t say it better than that.

Here’s the bookstore I’ll be taking myself to this Saturday, A Book For All Seasons in the sweet town of Leavenworth, WA.

Could there be a more adorable bookstore to take your child to?

Gotta admit, though, I won’t be taking a child. But I will be signing books for other people’s children! And, since I finally got sent the photo from the Chanticleer Review Awards Banquet from a couple of months ago, this seems like a legitimate place to visually brag on my book, The Flying Burgowski. Here she is, winning Best Contemporary YA Novel:

I know, the picture’s me. But the prize is for my book!h

And while I’m sending shout outs to myself, here’s one for my own local bookstore, Lopez Bookshop: I love you guys!

So, everyone on board? Show some love to your local bookstore–and a child or two–this Saturday!