How We Build Readers
Welcome to PBB! I’m Stephanie, the owner and mom of three bookstore babies. If you haven’t had a chance to check out our “About” section, I’ll give you a little bit of our “why.”
Back in 2023, we were going to bookstores every week, looking for new reads and a place to hang out. And while we love all bookstores, none of them felt quite right for our needs. Part of that was because we had three kids in three very different reading stages and were looking for guidance to support them. Most stores had a children’s section, but no real specialist who could put a book in my kids’ hands that would be appropriate and appealing to them.
When I discovered that we had no children’s bookstore in our area, my flabbers were gasted. I mean, this is a super family-oriented, suburban town! I knew right then and there that it was time to resurrect an old childhood dream: to own a bookstore.
I had zero knowledge of the book industry. I also had been in very few indie bookstores in my life (I like romance and preferred big boxes where nobody talked to me and I could buy my Bridgerton without a sideways glance).
In the past three years, I’ve learned a thing or two, and that’s what I want to share with you. Bookstores can be super intimidating. You think that you’re being judged, or worse, your kid is being judged. You think that we want to see tiny tots reading War and Peace by age 6 to prove that they’re literate and erudite. You are embarrassed that your 2nd grader is still into picture books, or that your child will only read graphic novels.
Well, I built this place to be not-embarrassing. I built it to be magical. I built it to be a fantasy trip away from the Literati.
When we remove the expectations from kids around reading, they really flourish. I could go into all the research that shows how different parts of your brain are used to read graphic novels, or that Lexile levels actually don’t measure the quality of the book or correlate to interest or age-appropriate content… but that’s a topic for another day.
Here at PBB, we have a few core beliefs. The one that really matters in this context is this:
Kids work really hard to learn to read. Then they work really hard reading to learn (we literally tell them that school is their job). It’s equally important that they learn to read for FUN. Adults use reading to escape and relax. We read romance, fantasy, mystery, and thrillers for the entertainment. We join book clubs and wear book shirts and do book crafts because the stories are wonderful and we want to share them with others.
PBB is the place for kids to find those books. The ones that they’ll re-read over and over again. That they’ll dog-ear, use as a coaster, and get beat up in their backpacks. That they’ll lend to friends and have to buy again. We are here to find the books that get them through a mood or a season. We’re here to help them find the books that they end up recommending to their kids one day.
Those books may be graphic novels or manga. They may be reading up or reading something they’ve loved for years. The point is that they’re learning to read for enjoyment.
That’s the PBB goal. We listen and we don’t judge. We read and we don’t judge. You read, and we really don’t judge.
