December Specials

Story of Divaali HC Reg. $16.99 Sale $14.99
Mama Panya's Pancakes PB Reg. $7.99 Sale $5.99
Calendar of Festivals PB Reg. $12.99 Sale $10.99
The Genius of Leonardo HC Reg. $16.99 Sale $13.99
Counting Cockatoos BB Reg $7.99 Sale $6.99

We All Go Traveling By

This is a cute book for the 1-3 year olds. On their way to school, the kids see a truck, a bike, a train, etc., all go traveling by.










Hardcover $17.99
Paperback $6.99
Paperback w/ sing-along CD $9.99

November Special Offers!

Barefoot Book of Knights - PB w/CD - Reg. $15.99 - Sale $12.99
Walking Through the Jungle - Paperback - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $4.99
Magic Train Ride - Paperback - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $4.99
Skip Through the Seasons - Paperback - Reg. $7.99 - Sale $5.99
First Morning: Poems About Time - HC - Reg. $15.99 - Sale $14.99
Alligator Alphabet - Board Book - Reg. $7.99 - Sale $5.99
Bunbun the Middle One - Board Book - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $5.99
Farmyard Jamboree - Paperback w/CD - Reg. $9.99 - Sale $6.99
Bear in a Square - Board Book - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $4.99
Magic Hoofbeats - Paperback w/CD - Reg. $16.99 - Sale $13.99
Zoe and Her Zebra - Board Book - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $5.99
Thesaurus Rex - Paperback - Reg. $6.99 - Sale $4.99

Barefoot Books in FAO Schwartz!

The grand opening of the Barefoot Books boutique!

With its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking 59th Street, the Barefoot Books boutique in the world's most famous toy store is a far cry from the small booth in a faraway aisle of the children's-only section where founders Nancy Traversy and Tessa Strickland made their first U.S. appearance at what was then ABA. Even then, however, they draped the tables in jewel-colored batik fabrics and lined up books alongside puzzles and gift cards that featured their illustrators' work.

The Real Princess: A Mathemagical Tale

Author: Brenda Williams
Illustrator: Sophie Fatus

Ages: 3-6 years

I knew I was going to like this book because I have a Math degree. :-) But I loved it even more as my daughter was following along adding and subtracting with the action of the story. This is a new version of The Princess and the Pea.











From the jacket: "Far away, in a tall, turreted castle, live a king and queen with 3 sons, 4 horses, 6 dogs and many servants (45 altogether). The time has come for the eldest prince to find a wife, but only a *real* princess will do -- and how can he be sure she is real? Fortunately, his mother has a secret magical solution..."

Hardcover $16.99

Libraries weren't always for children

When public libraries were created, they did not allow children. Anne Carroll Moore created the first children's library in 1896. The whole story is here.

...you had to be fourteen, and a boy, to get into the Astor Library, which opened in 1854, the same year as the Boston Public Library, the country’s first publicly funded city library, where you had to be sixteen. Even if you got inside, the librarians would shush you, carping about how the “young fry” read nothing but “the trashy”: Scott, Cooper, and Dickens (one century’s garbage being, as ever, another century’s Great Books).

Boston Globe profile

Wonderful story in the Boston Globe. Barefoot is in talks with PBS!

Barefoot Books' co-founder presenting the Fall 2008 line

Here is Tessa Strickland on Barefoot's 2008 Fall titles. Enjoy!

Today's China

Some facts about Today's China

Global interest in China and cross-cultural activities between China and the world are rising to heights never seen before. This August, the Olympics will be held in Beijing -- the capital city of China -- and in 2010 the World Expo will be held in Shanghai -- the largest city in China. Although China's economy has shown staggering growth since the 1980s, it is important to remember that the changes in China's economy and society are extremely recent and that a huge urban-rural divide, and a lack of support for improverished and disabled children, still remain.

The single-child policy was implemented in the late 1970s, but only became law in 2004.

Since the opening up of adoption in China in the 1980s, over 100,000 orphans have been adopted by families in 27 countries in the West.

Sex education in schools in China only began in 2002.

Freedom to travel without having to seek permission was only introduced in 2002.

In the whole of China, there is only one physical rehabilitation hospital located in Beijing, for the entire Chinese population of 1.3 billion people.

China has 320 million people under the age of fourteen, more than the entire population of the United States.

24% of the world speaks Chinese (there are over 200 different Chinese languages and regional dialects). The official state language is Pu-tong-hwa (Mandarin).

Three hundred million rural Chinese will move to cities in the next fifteen years. China must build urban infrastructure equivalent to a city the size of Houston every month in order to absorb them.

There are 222 million "surplus workers" in China's central and western regions. The number of people working in the US is about 140 million.

Apparel workers in the US make $9.56 an hour; in El Salvador, apparel workers make $1.65; in China, they make between 68 and 88 cents.

China has more speakers of English as a second language than America has native English speakers.

China has 56 ethnic groups, with totally different histories, languages, and cultures. Its geographical area is 42 times the size of the entire British Isles. Its 5,000 years of history have nourished wealth like that of modern Europe, and poverty as severe as that of the Sahara Desert; about 1.3 billion people are making things and trading in hundreds of accents in different languages.