Bookseller of the Year -- Honoring a Vermont Institution
Hon. Bernard Sanders of Vermont in the House of Representatives

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend Northshire Books, honored as this year's Bookseller of The Year. The selection and award was made by Publishers Weekly.

Northshire Books is located in the small town of Manchester, Vermont. Owned by Ed and Barbara Morrow, it is a wonderful example of a locally owned bookstore. It boasts a handsome environment for browsing books and a huge selection of titles. The selection it carries is not chosen by corporate giants seeking maximum sales, or by a central office following national trends. Quite the contrary, Northshire's wonderful inventory of books is the result of the informed knowledge of its staff: people who read and value books.

Northshire Books regularly presents readings by authors, allowing it to serve as a rich cultural resource for all of southwestern Vermont. It introduces young people to reading, through its fine children's section and "Story Times" for young readers. Vermont authors value this wonderful store.

"Northshire is everything one could want in a bookstore," said Vermont novelist Chris Bohjalian. "It's a huge gift to the state."

And bestselling novelist John Irving agreed: "What's remarkable about the quality and range of the Northshire Bookstore is that Manchester isn't a college town, or even a very big town, yet the store is both broad and deep -- it is literary, friendly to children, and welcoming to tourists. I love the place."

Novelist Howard Frank Mosher said, "Every time I walk through there, the first thing I see is a dozen or so of my favorite contemporary novels and nonfiction books." He continued, "Then, the booksellers that the Morrows have hired over the years are, I think, the most knowledgeable booksellers I've ever met. They've actually read the books they sell and know an enormous amount about them."

Northshire has not been purely commercial. In 2003, its owners sponsored "Cry Out: Poets Protest the War," a collection of the anti-war poems that were read by 11 renowned poets, including Galway Kinnell, Grace Paley, and Jamaica Kincaid, to an overflow crowd of 500 in Manchester's First Congregational Church. That event was announced after the White House canceled a poetry reading out of a fear that poems critical of the war in Iraq might be read. The poems read were subsequently published by Braziller.

And when the Patriot Act eliminated reader privacy -- making it easy for investigators to check bookstore purchases without judicial oversight -- Northshire actively opposed the law with the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression. As a result, a petition with 185,000 signatures was sent to Congress, asking that it restore protections for reader privacy, which were eliminated by Section 215 of the Act.

Small, local business is the heart of the American economy. Local bookstores are, and have been ever since the times of Benjamin Franklin (a bookshop owner), a center of American learning. Congratulations to Northshire bookstore; to owners Ed and Barbara Morrow; to its manager, Chris Morrow; to its staff; and to its dedicated and supportive patrons.