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Little Village Toy & Book Shop

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Littleton, NH, 03561
(603) 444-4TOY
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Little Village Toy & Book Shop

  • Welcome
    • Welcome
    • About
    • Current Business Hours & Info
    • Employment
    • Meet The Staff
    • Staff Picks
    • Awards
  • Local Author Consignment
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Special Orders
    • Special Order Requests
    • School & Library Special Order Requests
  • Contact

Monthly Staff Picks | June, 2026

June 2, 2026 Clare Brooks

Little Village Toy & Book Shop’s Monthly Staff Picks for June are here!

As you may have seen last month, the Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Angel Down’ kicked things off a little earlier in May than expected but will continue as one of our Adult picks throughout June, too.

We’ve added an additional Adult title this month with ‘Ducks, Newburyport’ by Lucy Ellmann; another title that plays with form and function, like ‘Angel Down’, but in an entirely different setting. This Booker Prize shortlisted tome of a novel follows an American housewife’s stream of consciousness in a not-too-distant Ohio; it’s an ambitious but worthwhile effort for the author and readers alike.

Our Middle Reader and Picture Book Picks this month are a delightful pair with Katherine Applegate’s ‘Odder’ & ‘Odder: An Otter's Story’. ‘Odder’, for middle readers, is the bestselling novel told in verse that follows a remarkable otter off the coast of central California. ‘Odder: An Otter’s Story’ is a picture book adaptation of the novel sure to delight readers young and old. Both versions of this heartwarming tale inspired by the true story of a Monterey Bay Aquarium Program feature gorgeous illustrations from Charles Santoso.

And last but certainly not least, our YA selection this month is ‘Encore!’ (available 6/2). This queer graphic novel rom-com sees two former best friends reunite in high school after drifting apart during childhood.

Visit us this month for 20% off of our Monthly Staff Picks for June, while supplies last!

Tags bookshop, bookstagram, indiebookstore, indiebookshop, staffpicks, booktok, shoplocal, littlevillagetoyandbookshop, little village

Monthly Staff Picks | May, 2026

May 1, 2026 Clare Brooks

A new month means new Monthly Staff Picks, here’s what we're highlighting this May!

Romance readers, or perhaps those looking to expand their literary horizons, are in for a real treat with the latest from Chloe Liese, ‘Happy Ending’. The perfect rom-com to kick off your summer follows divorcees who meet when their ex spouses begin dating; what follows is a thoughtful friends-to-lovers, slow-burn tale of a bookseller, a chef, and a “two family” beach vacation that changes everything.

Author and Illustrator Robert McCloskey’s Classic ‘Make Way For Ducklings’ is our Picture Book Pick this month. This merry tale of Mrs. Mallard and her eight ducklings as they travel to make a new home of the pond at the Boston Public Garden is as heartwarming and meaningful as ever and sure to delight readers new and old.

Another classic, albeit, in a new form is our Middle Reader selection this month; ‘Heidi: A Graphic Novel’ sees the titular heroine sent to live with her Grandfather in the Swiss Alps and this familiar story is given new life as adapted by Mariah Marsden and beautifully illustrated by Elena Bia.

For YA readers, our Pick this month is ‘Happyhead’ from Josh Silver, a dystopian thriller set in an experimental mental health facility where not all is as it seems and the risks one boy is willing to take to escape. The first in a twist-filled duology that is sure to please dystopian fans looking for something new and perhaps a little different.

Visit us this May for 20% off this month’s selection of Monthly Staff Picks, while supplies last!

Tags LittleVillageToyandBookShop, littlevillage, shoplocal, booktok, staffpicks, indiebookshop, indiebookstore, bookstagram, bookshop

Monthly Staff Picks | April, 2026

April 2, 2026 Clare Brooks

Our Monthly Staff Picks this April are perfect selections for those looking for a great springtime read!

From bestselling author Kristin Harmel comes ‘The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau’, our Monthly Staff Pick for adults this month. This decades spanning historical novel follows Colette, a one-time jewel thief helping to fund the French Resistance during WWII, as the mysteries and tragedies of the past resurface when a long lost bracelet resurfaces in a Boston Museum.

‘Beatrix Butterfly Wings It for Once’ is our Picture Book selection this month. This bright and colorful tale from Maren Morris & Karina Argow features illustrations from Kelly Anne Dalton is perfect for Spring. When Beatrix wakes up on the wrong side of her watermelon bed and is daunted by a long to-do list it’s through her friends that she learns to find a way to improve a day that gets off on the wrong foot.

For centuries, these gated woods have protected mythical creatures; and for twenty years Brandon Mull’s ‘Fablehaven’ has been delighting readers of all ages. Our selection for Middle Readers this April, join siblings Kendra and Seth as they inherit the role of Fablehaven’s caretaker. When the rules are broken and a powerful evil unleashed, they must race against the clock to save worlds both new and old in the first entry of this beloved series.

Our Young Adult pick this month, journeys into a much, much darker forest in CG Drews’s ‘Don't Let the Forest In’. This psychological horror novel follows two friends as one discovers that the other has been fighting his dark fairy tale drawings and they must band together to destroy these increasingly strong monsters before they can destroy their creator.

Join us this month for 20% off of all four of this April’s selections and for much more!

Tags Bookshop, bookstagram, indiebookstore, indiebookshop, staffpicks, booktok, shoplocal, littlevillagetoyandbookshop, littlevillage

New Releases | March 17th, 2026

March 13, 2026 Clare Brooks
  • Adult Fiction

    • Life: A Love Story - Berg, Elizabeth (Author)

    • Sisters in Yellow - Kawakami, Mieko (Author), Taylor, Laurel (Translator), Yoshio, Hitomi (Translator)

    • The Antidote - Russell, Karen (Author)

    • The Paris Express - Donoghue, Emma (Author)

    Biography

    • Lucky Girl: A Coming of Spirit Memoir - Vieira, Diane (Author), Vieira, Robert (Author)

    Board Books

    • Good Night, Little Blue Truck (Little Blue Truck #38) - Schertle, Alice (Author), McElmurry, Jill (Illustrator)

    • Baby Loves Robotics! (Baby Loves Science) - Spiro, Ruth (Author), Uno, Kat (Illustrator)

    • Touch a Truck Day: A Lift-The-Flap Book - Finison, Carrie (Author), Wang, Viola (Illustrator)

    Body, Mind & Spirit

    • The Lore Olympus Oracle Deck: A 54-Card Deck and Guidebook (Lore Olympus) - Smythe, Rachel (Author), Holden, H (Illustrator), Byars, Faith (Text by (Art/Photo Books))

    • Wisdom Untethered: The Time for Questions - Singer, Michael A (Author)

    Coloring Books

    • Creative Haven Otterly Adorable Coloring Book (Adult Coloring Books: Animals) - Goodridge, Teresa (Author)

    • Bluey and Friends: Outdoor Fun: A Coloring Book

    Cookbooks

    • One Plate at a Time: Recipes for Finding Freedom with Food - Lovato, Demi (Author)

    Family Issues Books

    • The Parent's Guide to Divorce: How to Protect Your Child's Mental and Emotional Health Through a Breakup or Separation - Komisar, Erica (Author)

    Graphic Novels

    • The Big Mousetake (The Great Puptective #3) - Tysoe, Alina (Author), Tysoe, Alina (Illustrator)

    Great Outdoors

    • The Allure and Peril of the Appalachian Trail - Carpenter, Steve (Author)

    Manga & Adult Graphic Novels

    • Ultimates by Deniz Camp Vol. 3: Rescue Mission (Ultimates) - Camp, Deniz (Author), Taboo (Author), Frigeri, Juan (Illustrator), Randal, Von (Illustrator), Ruan, Dike (Not Available)

    • The Lost Daughter of Sparta - Day, Felicia (Author), MacColl, Rowan (Illustrator)

    • The Flash: Rebirth: DC Compact Comics Edition - Johns, Geoff (Author), Van Sciver, Ethan (Illustrator)

    Middle Readers

    • Sir Edmund of the Wild West: Mystery in the Grand Canyon - Bowling, Dusti (Author), Hughes, Beth (Illustrator)

    • Bravepaw and the Heartstone of Alluria (Bravepaw #1) - Wilkinson, L M (Author), Naidu, Lavanya (Illustrator)

    Mystery & Thrillers

    • Bloodlust - Brown, Sandra (Author)

    Nature

    • The Feather Wars: And the Great Crusade to Save America's Birds - McCommons, James H (Author)

    Personal Growth

    • The Prosperous Heart: Creating a Life of Enough - Cameron, Julia (Author)

    Picture Books

    • The Littlest Elephant: A One and Only Ruby Story - Applegate, Katherine (Author), Judge, Lita (Illustrator)

    • Iguana Miss You! - Boynton, Sandra (Author)

    • The Mother Tree - Rosen, Sybil (Author), Carpenter, Nancy (Illustrator)

    • Tiny Hiker - Zimmers, Natasha (Author), Macgibbon, Jaimie (Illustrator)

    • Little Passenger - Sullivan, Deirdre (Author), Love, Jessica (Illustrator)

    • Ruthie - Shapiro, Esmé (Author)

    Science Fiction & Fantasy

    • Innamorata (The House of Teeth Duology) - Reid, Ava (Author)

    • The Tomb of Dragons (Chronicles of Osreth #3) - Addison, Katherine (Author)

    Social Sciences

    • Chain of Ideas: The Origins of Our Authoritarian Age - Kendi, Ibram X (Author)

This Week’s Top 5 Picks

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  • Say good night with Little Blue Truck and friends as they prepare for bed in this board book edition of the #1 New York Times bestseller!

    Beep! Beep! Beep! It's time for sleep!

    A storm is brewing and Little Blue Truck and his good friend Toad are hurrying home for bed. But who can sleep with all that racket? It's not long before other friends show up seeking safety from the storm. Thunder and lightning sure can be scary, but it's easy to be brave together. When the clouds roll on and the sky is clear, it's all aboard for a bedtime ride! Beep! Beep! Shhh . . .

    This perfect bedtime read-aloud is now available in a sturdy board book edition.

  • NATIONAL BESTSELLER - FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - From Pulitzer finalist, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, and bestselling author of Swamplandia! and Vampires in the Lemon Grove Karen Russell: a gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town

    "Achingly gorgeous. . . . Karen Russell is one of our most humane and generous writers; this book is as profound as it is wonderfully strange." --Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds

    The Antidote opens on Black Sunday, as a historic dust storm ravages the fictional town of Uz, Nebraska. But Uz is already collapsing--not just under the weight of the Great Depression and the dust bowl drought but beneath its own violent histories. The Antidote follows a "Prairie Witch," whose body serves as a bank vault for peoples' memories and secrets; a Polish wheat farmer who learns how quickly a hoarded blessing can become a curse; his orphan niece, a basketball star and witch's apprentice in furious flight from her grief; a voluble scarecrow; and a New Deal photographer whose time-traveling camera threatens to reveal both the town's secrets and its fate.

    Russell's novel is above all a reckoning with a nation's forgetting--enacting the settler amnesia and willful omissions passed down from generation to generation, and unearthing not only horrors but shimmering possibilities. The Antidote echoes with urgent warnings for our own climate emergency, challenging readers with a vision of what might have been--and what still could be.

  • From Mieko Kawakami, award-winning author of Breasts and Eggs, comes a bold novel of sacrifice and the tumultuous bonds of sisterhood, set in the gritty Tokyo of the 1990s.

    "I can never forget the sense of pure astonishment I felt when I first read Mieko Kawakami." --Haruki Murakami

    Hana has nothing - she's fifteen years old and living in a tiny apartment in a suburb of Tokyo with her young mother, a hostess at a local dive bar. They have no money, no security. Then Kimiko appears.

    Kimiko is older, a bright light in Hana's dark world. Together they set up Lemon, a bar that, despite its shabby setting and seedy clientele, becomes a haven for Hana. Suddenly Hana has a job she loves, friends to share her days with, and the glittering promise of money. She feels like a normal girl. She feels invincible.

    But in the narrow alleys of Sangenjaya, nothing is as it seems. Soon all of Hana's hope, her optimism, and her drive will be pushed to the limit . . .

    A story of enduring friendship and deep betrayal, Sisters in Yellow is a masterpiece of teenage dreams and adult cruelties that confirms Mieko Kawakami as one of the great writers of her generation.

  • The National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning charts how "great replacement theory" has become a dominant political idea of our time and ushered in an antidemocratic age.

    "[Kendi] has a gift for tracing how historical ideas metastasize into present, real-world damage. . . . Kendi reveals the mechanics behind the myth, and why confronting it is now a democratic necessity."--Oprah Daily

    NAMED ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2026 BY: The New York Times, Oprah Daily, LitHub, Foreign Policy, The Millions

    Recall the words chanted in Charlottesville, Virginia: "You will not replace us!" Recall the string of mass shooters across the globe--in Oslo, Christchurch, Buffalo, El Paso, and Pittsburgh--who claimed their crimes were a defense against "White genocide." Recall business and media figures cultivating anxiety and furor over demographic change. These incidents only scratch the surface: Popular and ruling politicians in every region of the world have expressed some version of great replacement theory, eroding democratic norms in the name of preventing demographic change.

    The term was coined in 2011 by a French novelist who argued that Black and Brown immigrants were "invading" Europe, brought by shadowy elites to "replace" the White population. From there, politicians and theorists in the United States and elsewhere repackaged it as a story of "globalists" welcoming "migrant criminals" and promoting diversity to take away the jobs, cultures, electoral power, and very lives of White people. Over time, great replacement theory has expanded those under threat to include citizens, men, Jews, Christians, heterosexuals, and ethnic majorities in countries as distinct as Russia, El Salvador, Brazil, Italy, and India, all targeted with the message that they are facing an existential attack that only a strongman can prevent.

    In Chain of Ideas, internationally bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi offers an unsettling but indispensable global history of how great replacement theory brought humanity into this authoritarian age--and how we can free ourselves from it.

  • A warm, intimate novel that reminds us of the richness that can be found all throughout our lives--by the New York Times bestselling author of The Story of Arthur Truluv and Open House

    As ninety-two-year-old Florence "Flo" Greene nears the end of her life, she writes a letter to Ruthie, the woman who grew up next door to her, describing the items Flo is leaving Ruthie in her will. But as it goes on, telling surprising stories about those "little" things Flo will leave behind (What could possibly be the worth of a rubber band kept in a matchbox tied up in red ribbon?), an unforgettable portrait of the life she has lived emerges.

    The letter starts off as an autobiography in things , but it turns out to do much more than that: ultimately, it will transform Flo and those around her. In the time she has left, Flo decides to take herself up on tiny dares. She encourages Ruthie to reconsider her impending divorce by sharing a startling, long-buried secret about her own perfect-seeming marriage. Flo has never had a pedicure before now, and as long as she's going to a beauty parlor, she arranges to have a blue streak put in her hair, too. And as these adventures lead her to make new friends, Flo helps them, too, find the fulfillment that living a full life has led her to understand.

    Full of Elizabeth Berg's characteristic mix of warmth, humor, and poignancy, Life: A Love Story is a reminder that whatever your circumstances, as long as you're alive, you can keep on investing in life. The joy will inevitably follow.

Tags shop local, indiebookstore, littletonnh, LittleVillageToyandBookShop, Ibram X Kendi, Demi Lovato, hiking, Little Blue Truck, Sandra Boynton, Picture Books, Ava Reid

Monthly Staff Picks | March, 2026

March 1, 2026 Clare Brooks

March is here! Spring is… thinking about it. And a new batch of Monthly Staff Picks are here at Little Village Toy & Book Shop!

Our Adult selection this month is a real treat for those looking for a Spring-time read, as Chloe Dalton’s acclaimed ‘Raising Hare’ is now in paperback. This nature memoir follows the author as she takes in a newborn hare she finds in the English countryside and is both a heartwarming tale of their relationship and how hares have been viewed across the history of art, literature, and folklore.

The sun shines. The temperature falls. Snowfall is in the forecast once again. And beloved author Kevin Henkes is asking ‘Is It Spring?’; this month’s Picture Book pick, full of colorful illustrations, is perfect for little ones looking to explore the signs as Spring slowly begins to show itself but Winter seems to want to stay.

For Middle Readers, and fans of all ages, our selection is ‘Wings of Fire: A Guide to the Dragon World ’- just in time to prepare for this month’s latest entry. From the world of the bestselling Wings of Fire series by Tui T. Sutherland comes this collection that sees the dragons of Pyrrhia and Pantala join forces to tell the histories of their tribes through all-new short stories, letters, songs, recipes and so much more. Featuring full-color maps and new illustrations throughout, this is a delightful expansion of the much loved fantasy series.

There be dragons in store for our YA readers this month, too. ‘A Language of Dragons’ by S.F. Williamson is our YA Pick this March; a thrilling alternate history fantasy set in 1920s London sees one young woman’s efforts to free a dragon ignite a civil war.

Visit us in store this March for 20% off all our Monthly Staff Picks, while supplies last!

In Summary Tags bookshop, bookstagram, indiebookstore, indiebookshop, staffpicks, booktok, shoplocal, littlevillagetoyandbookshop, littlevillage

Monthly Staff Pick | February, 2026

February 1, 2026 Clare Brooks

February has arrived and with it a new selection of Monthly Staff Picks here at Little Village Toy & Book Shop!

For adults this month, we have ‘Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space’. This riveting history follows decades of spaceflight all leading to a moment-to-moment account of the 1986 tragedy that forever changed America.

‘Learning to Ski with Mr. Magee’ is our Picture Book selection this month and is a seasonal New England favorite. Author and Illustrator Chris Van Dusen’s Mr. Magee returns, with his pet dog Dee in tow, as he heads out to ski and slapstick hi-jinks ensue in this fun read aloud tale for all ages.

Our Young Adult pick this month is ‘Alanna: The First Adventure’, the first book in the Song of the Lioness Quartet, by beloved fantasy author Tamora Pierce. This fantasy adventure classic follows Alanna as she finds a way to switch places with her brother and disguise herself in order to train as a page, all in the hopes of fulfilling her dream and setting her off on the road to knighthood.

And, releasing this Tuesday 2/3, for Middle Readers we have ‘The Lions’ Run’ from the award-winning Sara Pennypacker as our pick this month which is a thrilling historical WWII adventure of animals, friendship, and resistance!

Visit us this February for 20% off all of this month’s selections, while supplies last, and for so much more!

Tags bookshop, bookstagram, indiebookstore, indiebookshop, staffpicks, booktok, shoplocal, littlevillagetoyandbookshop, littlevillage
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