Penny Candy Books

09/12/2023

If you’re in Greensboro this weekend, stop by and say hi!

07/14/2023

“This is a book for kids (and adults) unafraid to use their brains. This is a book with guts and glory packed in its pages. See if you’re brave enough to give it a shot.”—Betsy Bird

Remember when Betsy Bird, librarian and reviewer extraordinaire, said these words about A Little Called Pauline?? That sure made our…year?! We took a risk publishing a poem by Gertrude Stein as a kids’ book, but illustrated those kooky lines and brought to life a beautiful tale.

I will forever cherish this book and want it to live on in the hands of as many folks as possible. I have 14 copies in my home inventory at $7 a piece. Order at the website.
—Lex

07/12/2023

Thank you for ordering! I’ll be shipping this week. We are sold out of a few titles in our home inventories, but check the website. Plenty of good stuff!

07/09/2023

Friends, it is with great sadness that we announce that we are closing down shop here at Penny Candy. We had a beautiful run, and we have been so honored to publish such a special list of books, to work with amazing authors and illustrators, and to have such supportive fans. Thank you for being part of the Penny Candy family.

We are currently selling our home inventory. Hardcovers are 7 bucks and softcovers are 6.

Website only: pennycandybooks.com

Help Penny Candy Books live on by putting a few on your shelves!

We’ll be closing down I’ve the next few months, so we’ll be here for a little while.

04/21/2023

See you tomorrow in Tulsa’s Whitty Books from 12-5 for and its Small Press Fair. We’ll have a MASSIVE sale going (books for $5, $6, and $7) and we’ll be rubbing elbows with , , , and other great presses. Come say hi and buy our books!

12/19/2022

Book banning is scary, but you know you’re doing something right (speaking truth to power) when your book gets banned. Sam!, along with 175 other titles, was removed from classrooms and has been sitting in storage in Duval County, Florida, since last January. These titles were purchased in 2021 as part of an Essential Voices collection.

Dani Gabriel, author of Sam! said in the article,

“When you ban a book like Sam! and a collection like Essential Voices, you are not just taking away books, you are silencing communities.”

Read the article here:

PEN America and We Need Diverse Books are calling attention to 176 banned books that Duval, County, Florida removed from classroom libraries in January 2022 for “review,” and kept in storage.

06/30/2022

Diane Worthey, author of In One Ear and Out the Other, a picture book biography of pioneering female conductor Antonia Brico, has written a moving article published online by the about Antonia: A Portrait of the Woman, the documentary by Jill Godmilow and Judy Collins. Read Diane’s article, read her book, and watch the documentary, if you can! Antonia’s story is more important than ever now.
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06/07/2022

If you are in the Davidson, NC, area tomorrow, June 9, and want to meet some genuine literary rock stars, then head to Main Street Books] between 11 am and noon to say hi to .haas02 and .haas.52, authors and stars of the “mostly true” story, The Year of the Buttered Cat. You won’t be disappointed!
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☀️ Looking for a great family read this summer?

🐈‍⬛ Local authors Susan and Lexi Haas have written a “mostly-true” memoir that’s warm, uplifting, and illuminating: a perfect family read.

🎤 MSB caught up with Susan and Lexi last week. You can read all about them and THE YEAR OF THE BUTTERED CAT at the link in our bio!

🖊 And bonus! Swing by Thursday, June 9 between 11 and 12 to meet the dynamic duo in person.

06/02/2022

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Tomorrow on National Gun Violence Awareness Day, we —the color hunters wear to tell people not to shoot—to honor gun violence victims and survivors, and to demand bold action from lawmakers.⁠
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Join us in wearing orange, and turn your profile picture orange with the tool at the link in our bio.

05/19/2022

The opening page from Thank You, Crow by Michael Minkovitz and Jose D. Medina. Everything should have a place where they can go to be play pretend and have adventures. Where was yours as a kid?
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05/13/2022

A giant congratulations to Mariana Llanos, whose latest book (Run, Little Chaski, published by ) just won the Oklahoma Book Awards for children’s book! We are so happy for Mariana, and we’re proud to have published two of her earlier picture books (Luca’s Bridge/El puente de Luca, illustrated by ; and Eunice and Kate, illustrated by .art).
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05/10/2022

Denver!! Save the date! Diane Worthey will be in town for two events on May 20! Antonia Brico’s story is one for all ages, not just kids, and Diane knows her stuff.

05/06/2022

Celebrate today by reading one of his many wonderful books for children! These are but a few that have been published by other presses we admire. We at Penny Candy were fortunate to collaborate with Floyd on an illustration for Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy by .

04/28/2022

A glorious excerpt from Between Two Worlds: The Art & Life of Amrita Sher-Gil, written by .sriram and illustrated by .
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04/22/2022

May 6 is , and to celebrate his life and work the has put together a lot of great resources. More on that in a few weeks. But for now we are just gonna post this, his illustration for Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy by , with gratitude that we had an opportunity to work with this absolute legend.
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04/21/2022

It’s National Poetry Month! So we’re celebrating by offering a special 2 for $20 sale on two of our bestselling titles: H Is for Haiku and Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy. Don’t miss out!
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04/14/2022

Thank you, , for naming The Yellow Suitcase by .sriram with illustrations by to your list of children’s books about death and grief. Your work to help people live well AND die well is extremely important. You’ll be interested to know that we have three other titles about death and the grief that results from the loss of a loved one. We hope you and your readers will find them to be useful and true. ❤️, Penny Candy Books

04/07/2022

It was truly glorious to see Naomi Shihab Nye, the ’s Young People’s Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2021, read in person yesterday at . The author of so many amazing books for kids and a adults, she’s an inspiration and a treasure. Read her work! I especially loved hearing her read poems from her book Cast Away, in which she speaks from the POV of items that people throw away or discard. We at Penny Candy are also very grateful to Naomi for her blurb of a book we published in 2017, the English translation of The Blue Pool of Questions by .
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03/31/2022

We love love love the books we’ve published. I think this photo by shows 18 of the 29 we’ve released.
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03/24/2022

Congrats to you, , on your new side hustle as a book salesperson! Whatever your motives are, you have just given this amazing book (Antiracist Baby by and ) a big boost in sales. If you’d like to represent our books—which also feature characters that frankly and honestly explore thorny (and scary to some people) topics like race and racism, gender identity, immigration and emigration, death and grief, feminism, multiculturalism, and (perhaps scariest of all) curiosity and open-mindednesses—we’d be happy to take you on for a spell. Provided, of course, that you learn how not to sound so patronizing when speaking to people. Book buyers don’t like being talked down to. Thanks, Penny Candy Books
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03/17/2022

Another week, another amazing deal for all you book lovers out there! This week’s Two for Twenty special features the two novels we’ve published under our Penelope Editions imprint: Cloud Hopper by Beth Kephart; and The Year of the Buttered Cat by Susan Haas with Lexi Haas. If you like moving middle grade/young adult titles with strong female narrators and compelling storylines, then don’t miss this deal!
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03/10/2022

New deal alert! 3 Mind-Bending Books for $33! The Day We Lost Pet by Chuck Young and Aniela Sobieski; Infinity by Pablo Bernasconi; and A Little Called Pauline by Gertrude Stein and Bianca Stone. Get the books that librarian, author, and review Betsy Bird () called, respectively, one of the Oddest Books of 2018, one of the most Unconventional Books of 2021, and a “book for kids (and adults) unafraid to use their brains.”
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03/03/2022

This week’s Two for Twenty sale: get Hedy and Her Amazing Invention and In One Ear and Out the Other: Antonia Brico and Her Amazingly Musical Life for $20.
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Help us celebrate Women’s History Month by purchasing two of our Amazing Women nonfiction picture books at a great price. You’ll learn about two amazing women who charted their own paths in life and made a big difference in our world.
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Hedy and Her Amazing Invention is the last picture book legendary author Jan Wahl published before his death in 2019. In One Ear and Out the Other is Diane Worthey’s debut picture book. Both were illustrated by Morgana Wallace.
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03/01/2022

It’s women’s history month! Enjoy the stories of three amazing women: Hedy Lamarr, Antonia Brico, and Amrita Sher-Gil.

02/25/2022

Hello, Governor Abbott of Texas ( and ), this is your friendly children’s book publisher to the north (in Oklahoma), chiming in to say we stand with trans kids and that giving children—trans or otherwise—the care they need is never child abuse. Abuse is denying people access to the care they need or giving them the wrong kind of care. If you took a moment to read one of the books we’ve published—Sam! by Dani Gabriel and illustrated by Robert Liu-Trujillo—you might come to think differently about trans kids and their needs. Or you might have your next book to ban. Either way, we’d love to send you a free copy. Where should we send it? Sincerely, Penny Candy Books
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02/24/2022

We’re starting a new running sale called “Two for Twenty” in which you can get—you guessed it!—2 of our titles for $20. This week we’re offering Barbara Nye’s two picture books: Zadie and the Stripey Sock and Somewhere a Bell is Ringing. These books are gorgeous, funny, and meaningful—so act fast to get them both for twenty dollars, as we’ll be doing a new Two for Twenty deal at the end of next week.
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02/22/2022

One of our favorite spreads from Barbara Nye's Zadie and the Stripey Stock. In this spread, Zadie is desperately looking for the match to her favorite stripey sock so she can run away. She asks her dad if he’s seen it, and he asks if she’s seen his lawnmower. Such wit in this book!

02/17/2022

Finding our books taking up almost an entire shelf at a local indie bookstore (thank you !!!) has me seeing in 3-D! I spy 9 of our titles jumping off the shelf!

02/15/2022

How cool is it that not one but two Penny Candy books made the 2021 Rise! A Feminist Booklist selections!? Congrats to Between Two Worlds and In One Ear and Out the Other—two fascinating and empowering books about amazing women!!

02/10/2022

Each December, rockstar librarian, author, and genuine social media phenom Betsy Bird keeps the kidlit community entertained and enlightened with her “31 Days, 31 Lists” review of the best, weirdest, funniest, most interesting books of the year. And this past December, Infinity by made not one but two of ’s lists: Unconventional Children’s Books and Translated Children’s Books!
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Here’s what she wrote about Infinity:

“This little Argentinian import attempts to define the infinite via the mundane. Thus you end up with little conundrums like “It’s a carpenter waiting for the love of his life in the wrong life.” Each phrase is accompanied by an illustration that’s this amazing mix of models, photography, paint, digital tinkering, and more. With a hat tip to mathematicians, some of the pages have equations in their corners that “capture and represent a take on the concept of infinity”. It is overwhelmingly an import and not of American make or design. Why do I say that? Because it’s so incredibly original. A lot of Americans won’t get what it’s doing, but some might. I think the dreamy kids, the dreamy teens, the dreamy college students, and beyond will get a lot out of this title. Or, at the very least, they’ll stretch their minds to their fullest as they attempt to figure out riddles like, “It’s the formula for happiness hidden in a cow’s hide. But on the inside.”

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Thank you, Betsy, for digging this gem of a book!
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