One summer evening, two young girls ran into my bookstore and thundered up the stairs. Pretty soon they began calling out dates. “1887,” cried one. “1876,” the other replied. I soon realized that they were playing a game—looking for the oldest book in the store. Now having two ten-year olds pulling fragile volumes off the shelves to check their dates is not my idea of a good Friday night. But I resisted the temptation to scold them (or their father, who arrived in the shop ten minutes later, coffee in hand). Here, after all, were two kids having fun in an antiquarian bookstore. They were interested in old books and already knew enough to spot nineteenth-century books, which we shelve right alongside modern editions in our literature section.

As I thought about what to do, something Chuck Rozanski wrote came to mind. Rozanski started out thirty-five years ago living in his car with his inventory of comic books. Today, his company, Mile High Comics, is the biggest dealer in comics in the world. Like book lovers, comics fans worry about the future of their hobby. Sales of comic books have declined and comic-book stores have closed perhaps even faster than bookstores. What I admire in Rozanski is his belief that the situation is not inevitable. He recently put the challenge to comics fans everywhere:

I would ask you to consider what you are personally doing to try to save the comics world. I realize that there is not a single one of us who can have any measure of a significant impact solving this kind of dilemma alone, but I do fervently believe that great numbers of people working toward a common goal can create an astonishing level of positive change. To be a bit more specific, I would ask what kind of outreach you have done of late to try to bring new readers into comics?

Change comics to books in the above statement and we have a challenge for every person concerned with the future of the book. Are we going to let the culture of the book dwindle in the face of video games, iPods, and reality TV? Or are we going to do something about it? To use the language of our current politics, are we, as passionate believers in books, going to knuckle-down and implement a book surge, or are we going to raise the white flag of surrender?

I'm not ready to give up, and as the girls’ footsteps thudded above my head, I grabbed the oldest book in the store, a 1563 edition of the ancient physician Galen. I went upstairs and handed it to one of the girls. I showed her how to open an old book carefully. Her eyes grew wide. Her sister leaned in. I showed them the date, written in Roman numerals, and the text printed in Greek. I took them downstairs and let them hold a leaf from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, which is the oldest item in the shop. Then it was time for them to go, and they dashed out of the store as fast as they came in, excitedly chattering about holding a piece of paper printed the year Columbus returned from the New World (a concept they only barely grasped, but they knew it was very old).

As the girls left, I wondered if either of them would become passionate readers? Maybe not, but it’s a lot more likely now than if I had shooed them out of the store. The future of the book comes down to a battle of hearts and minds, and in many cases, it's hand-to-hand combat, winning converts a person at a time.

Posted by: Scott Brown