Spotlight on ABA Board Candidate Collette Morgan

American Booksellers Association Board of Directors ballots, arriving in stores now, feature the names of two new candidates for the Board: Collette Morgan of Wild Rumpus Books for Young Readers in Minneapolis and Michael Tucker of Books Inc. in San Francisco. Their names appear along with those of Russ Lawrence of Chapter One Book Store in Hamilton, Montana, who is up for a second three-year term on the Board and who will serve for the first time as Vice-President/Secretary, and Mitchell Kaplan of Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida, for a second term as ABA President.

BTW recently had a chance to talk to Collette Morgan about her bookstore and her planned focus as an ABA Board member. (Watch for a profile on Michael Tucker in next week's issue of BTW.)

Collette Morgan founded Wild Rumpus in 1992 with core stock from the children's department of the former Odegard Bookstore, where she had worked as the children's book buyer for three years. When that store's closing was imminent, Morgan said, the owner offered her a fire sale deal on the children's section, and although, after attending an ABA Booksellers School in the late '80s, she thought the "last thing to do would be open my own bookstore before going to learn from someone else," she found herself doing just that.

Within months of purchasing the stock, Morgan opened the 2,000-square foot children's bookstore in Linden Hills, an urban neighborhood in Minneapolis. Thirteen years later, Wild Rumpus is a thriving, vibrant store that's a "pretty lively place," said Morgan. The store lives up to its name -- it's home to three cats, two chickens (that walk around freely), a ferret, geckos, two tarantulas (that don't walk around freely), four rats, cockatiels, fish, and finches. "People don't just come in, buy a book, and leave," she said. "They stay a long time.

"I've learned so much," said Morgan about her years at Wild Rumpus. "The business has increased steadily since the day we opened, and I think that's a wonderful compliment."

A member of the first ABA Booksellers Advisory Council, Morgan has served on the Board of the Midwest Booksellers Association (formerly the Upper Midwest Booksellers Association), and she's currently on MBA's informal Bookseller Advisory Council. She also serves on the local advisory Board of the national children's literacy organization, First Book.

"I'm very passionate about creating future readers," explained Morgan. "I do a lot of literacy work with inner city kids and the immigrant population in Minneapolis. I'm very interested in literacy issues and how to reach poorer populations and ESL populations. Creating lifelong readers is what I'm all about."

In addition to literacy issues, if elected to the ABA Board, Morgan said, "I'm interested in [maintaining] the lines of communication between booksellers and ABA to make sure everyone's voice is heard.

"Another concern is Main Street initiatives, which I just started working on in Minneapolis. We're trying to zone the community so the big box chains can't get in very easily and to promote smaller, independent businesses and keep Main Street viable." --Karen Schechner