It seems to happen this way every month: we hem and haw about a theme, a motif, an image to thread through the newsletter, to guide our rambling thoughts. Pots of tea and cookie crumbs clutter the workspace; our hair becomes increasingly knotty and unkempt as we worry it with our non-typing fingers. We try brainstorming, but get caught up on how utterly weird the word "brainstorming" is (is that a meteorological storm, or storming as in "storming the Bastille?"). Then — serendipity! — it was staring us in the face the whole time!

KIDS' Q&A: ELLEN KLAGES
Ellen Klages produced a winner with her very first published novel: The Green Glass Sea garnered the 2006 Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction, and we heartily applaud the acknowledgement of this very fine book. It takes place at Los Alamos during the race to create the atomic bomb. This riveting backdrop is juxtaposed with the ordinary escapades of two very different eleven-year-old girls whose parents are scientists helping to create the bomb. We are lucky enough to be hosting Ellen Klages at our Burnside location for an afternoon reading and book signing on Saturday, March 10, at 2 p.m. If her rollicking Q&A is any indication, it will be a thoroughly entertaining event. For a limited time only, get this stunning, award-winning novel at 30% off the cover price — then come to the in-store event!

KIDS' Q&A: EMILY ARNOLD MCCULLY
Emily Arnold McCully has written and illustrated numerous books throughout the years, including some of the liveliest and most beautiful books for children about women in history. Marvelous Mattie (about inventor Margaret E. Knight), The Ballot Box Battle (about Elizabeth Cady Stanton), and Beautiful Warrior (about two famed kung-fu masters) are now joined by her latest, The Escape of Oney Judge, the story of a young house slave of Martha Washington. Read our Q&A with Emily Arnold McCully and purchase The Escape of Oney Judge at 30% off.

Did you know? Ruth J. Colvin is the founder of the Literacy Volunteers of America. The organization has now taught nearly half a million people to read.

KIDS' Q&A: JENNY OFFILL AND NANCY CARPENTER
The minute we saw Seventeen Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore, we knew someone had spied on us. How did they know all the mischief that occurred in our household? Imagine Ramona as the star of her own picture book. We don't want to give anyone ideas, but this book is just too much fun to keep to ourselves. Read the Q&A with Jenny Offill and Nancy Carpenter and enjoy this wry and charming book.

Do we feel warm to you? We just found out that Rosalyn Yalow, one of the nation's premier medical physicists, is one of only thirty-three women to have won a Nobel Prize (over 700 men have had the honor).  Yalow was awarded the Nobel for Physiology or Medicine in 1977.  Maybe she has a thermometer we can use.

PREORDER HARRY POTTER
You know Rowling's been saving the best for last. If you're in town, come to one of our stores and enjoy the midnight extravaganza we have planned for July 20. How much fun is it buying #7 and devouring it over the rest of the weekend? Or preorder Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows from the comfort of home today, and you'll save over $10 off the cover price as well as avoid the long drive from... Wisconsin! (I hear Harry does a nude scene in this one. What? He doesn't? Oh well, we'll buy it anyway.)

THE CAT IN THE HAT TURNS 50!
"The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house all that cold, cold wet day." Thus, 50 years ago, a classic was born. Find The Annotated Cat: Under the Hats of Seuss and His Cats by Philip Nel — all big and blue and brimming with couplets — at 30% off. Also, celebrate the Cat's birthday and help support literacy in your community. Click here to print out a birthday card that can be sent to the Cat in the Hat. For every card received, Random House Children's Books will make a donation to First Book, a nonprofit organization that has provided more than 40 million new books to children in need in hundreds of communities nationwide.

Back in her day, Louisa May Alcott published 270 books in addition to Little Women. We're impressed; we can barely write a grocery list!

AWARD WINNERS
Those darn awards committees always manage to stump us. Every year we try to guess which books are going to take home the prizes, and every year there are many surprises, often introducing us to books that hitherto had not crossed our paths. Find all the award winners on Powells.com, from Caldecott to Newbery to Printz; buy them, read them, and decide if they are winners in your book (so to speak).

By the way, the Newbery winner is already embroiled in a juicy controversy; read about it in the Toronto Star, here.

MORE ABOUT YOUR FAVORITE KIDS' AUTHORS
If you're like us, when you find an author you like — we mean that you really, really like — you want to read all about her. So we searched high and low for more information about some of our most beloved authors. Here are some of our favorites.

NEW ARRIVALS
Harry Potter isn't out until July, folks, which means you've got over four months to read something else. May we humbly suggest a few of our new arrivals? Perhaps you'll start with Pirates Don't Change Diapers, or Penni Russon's sequel to Undine, Breathe. Something for the Anglophiles: The Case of the Left-Handed Lady (an Enola Holmes Mystery) by Nancy Springer. Feeling elfish? So is Little Fur in Isobelle Carmody's A Fox Called Sorrow. Nod's Limbs: Edgar and Ellen #6 finds the pair awfully perturbed — again. These new titles may not come with too much fanfare, but we're pleased to make their acquaintance.

BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2006 (ACCORDING TO US)
There are plenty of awards out there, as well as "Best Of" lists, to help you sift through the masses of books published every year. At Powell's, we see a gargantuan number of books and we are pretty opinionated about most of them. There has been heated discussion among the Kids' Teams about which books were the best of 2006. It turns out we agreed with the awards committees when it came to young adult and middle reader fiction: our top picks were the Printz Honor books The Book Thief and An Abundance of Katherines, along with Scott O'Dell winner The Green Glass Sea. The picture book category, however, accumulated so many nominations that the final voting was spread thin across the vast expanse. Some of our favorites included Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt and 365 Penguins by Jean-Luc Fromental. We also loved Beauty and the Beast, illustrated by Angela Barrett, and Duck and Goose by Tad Hills (the sequel, Duck Duck Goose is just out).

KIDS' BESTSELLERS

1. The Van Gogh Café by Cynthia Rylant (Middle Readers) 2. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson (Young Adult) 3. Esperanza Rising by Pam Munoz Ryan (Middle Readers) 4. By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman (Middle Readers) 5. Mexico (A to Z) by Justine Fontes (People and Cultures) 6. The Trail of Tears by Joseph Bruchac (Beginning Readers) 7. The Circuit by Francisco Jimenez (Young Adult) 8. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll (Classics) 9. Garbage and Recycling by Rosie Harlow (Environment) 10. Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell (Newbery Award Winners)

Did you get our theme? March is Women's History Month!