Winter weather can give you the blues, but here at Bookmans, we've got the perfect remedy—song, dance and fun for the whole family! Bookmans Flagstaff will be hosting a Kids' Winter Jamboree on Saturday, February 20 at the Orpheum Theater! There will be food, kids' music, dancing, prized and lots of other fantastic events. Chuck Cheesman and Matthew Henry Hall will lead the kids in singing, dancing and a fun interactive story time!

Pam Greenslate, an accomplished Native American flute player, will bring her talents to Bookmans Mesa on Wednesday, February 3 at 6:00 p.m. Greenslate, who has been playing the Native American flute for more than 13 years, was originally self-taught after purchasing a traditionally-made flute and learning to play by ear and experimentation.

If you missed her at Bookmans Speedway back in January, now is your chance to meet-and-greet Erin Saelens, children's book author, at Bookmans Phoenix on Saturday! We'll host Erin, author of Cog Corner Goes Green, a new children's book about robot characters that strive to clean up their new neighborhood and start a recycling crew, for a meet-and-greet and a book signing on Saturday, February 6 from noon to 2:00 p.m. Erin is also the founder of an organic children's apparel line, featuring the characters from her books on the clothing.

Thanks to everyone who entered this week, we received lots of entries in our store and online. If you're listed as a winner this week, go to the store you submitted your entry at with a picture ID after Monday to collect your $50 Bookmans gift certificate! If you submitted your entry online, we will contact you by e-mail regarding how to receive your gift certificate. Congratulations to our first week's winners, listed below:

The January results for our 2010 Bookmans' Reading Challenge are in and they're simply AMAZING! We have an overwhelming response this year, and in the first month of the challenge, students from the 73 participating Arizona schools read an incredible 285,266 books! (in January alone...WOW!)

As a longtime supporter of music and education, Bookmans is proud to sponsor three eight-week sessions of Guitars In The Classroom in the Phoenix metro area during the 2009-10 school year. The first local program of its kind, Guitars In The Classroom (GITC) is a non-profit organization that provides guitar classes to classroom teachers to help them integrate music into their students' daily school experiences and improve learning and retention levels. Bookmans' sponsorship of this program allows classroom teachers to receive these lessons for FREE!!

During the month of January, Bookmans Phoenix and Bookmans Mesa raffled off a staycation package to customers who entered in-store during the month! We got hundreds of entries from all over the Phoenix metro area, and even some from farther away! We're happy to announce that we've randomly selected one winner from our contest -- congratulations to Jessica W., who entered at our Phoenix store!

What do Dr. Seuss, greyhound rescue groups, belly dancing, origami and author signings have in common? Well... nothing much, other than that they're all happening this weekend at a Bookmans near you!

Some of you may have heard: Bookmans Flagstaff employees are supporting our normal community events even though we don't have our brick-and-mortar location. We've taken to the streets and are continuing to sponsor and support our core causes: environment, literacy, animal welfare and education, while we're helping to rebuild the store, sort through inventory and getting ready to start buying merchandise again!

This week alone, we will have people reading to kids during our weekly story times, except instead of in the stores, we'll be traveling to three local elementary schools to read and help in the reading room of the Northland Family Help Center; and supporting our weekly in-store animal adoption events by working with abused animals at Second Chance Center for Animals.

This week, our Flagstaff Bookmans employees have been working with Grand Canyon Wolf Recovery Project with their work hosting the Wild and Scenic Environmental Film Festival, showing at the Orpheum Theater beginning at 7:00pm tonight, February 19th. We're showing our support for environmental causes AND supporting independent film. We'll also be letting everyone know that we'll soon be open and ready to buy again!

This last Saturday, January 20th, Bookmans in Flagstaff hosted a giant kids party at the Orpheum Theater to celebrate the continuing success of the Music in the Classroom (MIC) program, which brings great music and movement education to all the local Head Start classrooms. We had originally planned to host the MIC party at our store, but after the roof collapse, the Orpheum Theater came to our rescue, offering a new space to host our party! Chuck Cheesman, our MIC instructor, and children’s author and musician Matthew Henry Hall provided music and story time entertainment, while Wild West Entertainment’s balloon sculptor and face-painter worked-up a sweat decorating all the little ones with musical pictures and huge balloon hats!

This month has been full of events, author signings, birthday parties and more! We've got a few great events left to wrap up the month, so don't miss out. We're also wrapping up our Love of Reading Contest for the month. So far, we've given out $350 in Bookmans gift certificates during the contest, and we've still got seven more $50 gift certificates to give out! Get your entries in by Thursday at 5 p.m. to be eligible for the last round. More on how to enter here.

It's almost the end of February, so that means we're wrapping up our Love of Reading Contest. Thank you to everyone for participating. We received so many inspiring entries – we only wish we could give every single one a $50 gift card. If you're listed as a winner this week, go to the store you submitted your entry at with a picture ID after Monday to collect your $50 Bookmans gift certificate! If you submitted your entry online, we will contact you by e-mail regarding how to receive your gift certificate. Congratulations to our final week's winners, listed below: