The Guardian reported this week that readers of romance novels are leading a mass exodus away from printed copies to eBooks. The simple reason: romance covers attract judgement. eBooks provide romance readers a welcome anonymity from peering eyes on bus rides and at subway stops.

And who can blame them? Romance covers (and titles) are not known for their subtlety. Nor are they accredited much merit by non-readers. So I guess this trend toward eBooks will eventually take over the genre. Most romance, like the pulp fiction of yore, is produced to be consumed quickly then discarded. It's a perfect opening for eBook publishing. Mills and Boon, the leading romance publisher in Britain, already produces over 100 eBooks a month.

The Booksellers Association (BA) in Britain has requested aid from the UK government to keep bookshops in operation. Tim Godfray, head of BA, urged the government to act soon to protect more bookshops from closing.

The requests came after the BA discovered a decline in membership of 20% over the last six years, with an even steeper decline in independent bookshop members, which are down 26% over the same period.

The BA would like tax relief for businesses of cultural and educational value to keep bookshops operating on high streets and to protect "the well-being of society." The BA would also like local governments to build more free or low-cost parking near town centers to facilitate high street shopping. ("High streets," are the UK equivalent of "main streets.")

I formerly worked for McNaughtan's Bookshop, a small ABA bookshop on Leith Row in Edinburgh. While we were not on the "high street" in Edinburgh, we were not far from it and parking for our customers was certainly a problem. The few parking spots anywhere nearby were expensive and often full. Parking concerns, of course, affected all the local high street businesses and were not specific to bookshops. But sales would likely have been improved by better parking opportunities. 

It's no secret that children's picture book art and illustration is a growing trend both at auctions and in museums. The cover feature of our fall issue (making its way to your mailbox this week) is about cartoonist, artist, and playwright Jules Feiffer, who illustrated The Phantom Tollbooth fifty years ago and has been focused on children's book illustrations for the last decade or so. It so happens that an exhibit of this part of his artistic life opens later this month at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. The curator, Leonard S. Marcus, a children's book historian who also wrote our cover story, is very interested in this cultural reappraisal of comics art and children's illustration. 

In fact, he just curated another exhibit, Storied City: New York in Picture Book Art, which opened yesterday at the Katonah Museum of Art in Katonah, NY. Storied City showcases original art from more than thirty-five picture books and examines the city's iconic landmarks, neighborhoods, parks, and modes of transportation. The featured illustrators include seven Caldecott Medal winners and several artists long associated with The New Yorker magazine.

This exhibit builds upon a book Marcus wrote back in 2003, Storied City: A Children's Book Walking-Tour Guide to New York City, that takes readers on a series of thirty-two tours in all five boroughs, to places like the model boat pond featured in Stuart Little. As Marcus told me last week, "The exhibition, like the book, was inspired by my lifelong appreciation of New York as mythic place of superlatives—firsts and biggests and bests—and my awareness that a substantial illustrated literature for kids had grown up around that premise. A few dozen new books are added to the list every year."

Storied City is a companion exhibit to another NYC-themed exhibit that "celebrates the city as artistic muse," and is drawn from the collection of the Norton Museum of Art. New York, New York! The 20th Century includes paintings, photographs, and sculptures of New York's landmarks from artists like Diane Arbus, Childe Hassam, and Edward Hopper. Both run through December 31.