Master’s Student Asks: How and Why Does Little Shop of Stories Matter To Decatur?
Decatur Metro | October 6, 2015 | 11:05 amMaster’s student Joy is gathering feedback about the impact of the Little Shop of Stories on the Decatur community for an essay she’s writing.
She wrote in asking whether we would be willing to contemplate the follow question – does Little Shop of Stories matter to Decatur, and if so, how and why? She’s also specifically curious to know if it matters that Little Shop is a children’s bookstore, and whether Decaturites wish for a “Big shop” as well with grown-up books.
Photo courtesy of Sydney Huggins via Flickr
Little Shop of Stories is a great, great community asset. The staff is extremely helpful and fun and will order any adult book that anyone wishes to order. Does it all.
How awesome is it that kids can not only safely walk/bike to the store on their own, but also that they will be greeted by name when they enter. (And undoubtedly run into a friend while they are there.) Little Shop was a real selling point when we decided to move to Decatur 4 years ago. I also really appreciate the fact that they coordinate the book fairs at the the elementary schools. I think that facilitates greater diversity of titles and publishers than the traditional book fair route does. And finally, programs like galley club and the author visits educate kids about the writing and publishing process and empower them to be writers themselves.
I second everything Hannah said. The folks in the shop know our kids by name and greet them (and us!) warmly not only in the store, but when we run into them around town. They are genuinely passionate about books and about putting the right books into kids’ hands so that they will develop a lifelong love of reading. The community events they plan and/or sponsor are fantastic, creative, and really help to set Decatur apart from other communities around Atlanta. And their camps are second to none — not only fun, but educational and truly inspired. Recently, I was confronted with a dilemma about a book my daughter wanted to read, but which seemed a bit too complex for her age/reading level, so I asked Diane and Terra at LSOS for advice. Because they both knew the book and the author well, they were able to give me detailed information with which to make an informed decision about whether now is the right time for my daughter to read the book, or whether she should wait another year or two. I value their knowledge, their enthusiasm and their kindness so much.
We don’t have kids, but our favorite gift for the children of friends and family is a book. We almost always get them at LSOS, as the advice there is invaluable. A recent purchase of an illustrated Robert Frost collection was a huge hit with the recipient. Even though we no longer live in Decatur, we plan on continuing to make such purchases at LSOS.
I’m itching to get out of Georgia, as much as I love living in Decatur. I search for our future home by looking at cities with children’s bookstores. To me, it’s the barometer for progressive, edgy and creative places.
Any particular reason you are itching to leave Georgia? Just curious.
What was that line of Mary Tyler Moore’s in the Dick Van Dyke Show? Something along the lines of “If I have to explain, you wouldn’t understand.” Perhaps that applies here.
Any time a child can visit a bookstore made just for her it is a good thing. As an elementary age reading specialist I find that appropriate book selection is one of the hardest things for children to do on their own. Little Shop is such a good solution to this problem. Not only do they have an excellent selection of children’s literature but the staff is extremely knowledgable. I loved that my nieces were greeted by name and the staff was ready with titles that they might like.
Also- I have heard great things about the community involvement that happens. My niece got to introduce a major author when she was a second grader. How often does that happen?! Not to mention the community reads and visiting author events…
Sure, a Big Shop would be great for the grown-ups, but it needs to be completely separate. Let Decatur kids savour the rare treat that is a book store dedicated entirely to them.
Yeah, it matters.
I read a few dozen books each year, all of them electronic. My two kids, though, still read the old-fashioned way, on dead trees, and they frequently ask to go to “Little Shops of Stories” to get new books. Once I took them to Barnes & Nobles, and they were all like, “Uhhhh… this place sucks. Can we just go to Little Shops of Stories?” I’m not kidding. That really happened.
The staff know way too much about every book and author (do they not have any lives outside of books?), and are able to use it to help adults and children make good choices.
The store itself is fun and inviting. That makes a big difference. It’s got bathrooms. That makes a YUGE difference.
So does it matter? Yes. It is a valuable service that contributes to the education and emotional well-being of families. It’s also the kind of place that visitors would come to and leave thinking, “This town is so much better than our town. Our town sucks next to this town.”
When they were first starting out (before they’d even opened I think), they were advertising for the new shop in a big way by sponsoring the book fairs at the elementary schools (or at least at Glennwood–not sure about the others). I thought it was an amazing idea, to have a book fair handled by a local bookstore and not Scholastic. [Oh, how I loved it when we stopped getting those leaflets from Scholastic!] That was probably the most impressive thing to me for a long time–until they started pulling in heavyweights in the children’s book world to the Book Festival. The walls that are covered with illustrations from famous children’s book authors and illustrators is testament to their success. I love going there and my kids love it too. My kids are all getting older but we still go to LSOS for friends’ birthday presents 99% of the time. I love that they are local people I see all the time who know my kids, and I love showing the shop off to people whenever they visit us.
LSOS is wonderful, and fills a great niche, but Decatur hasn’t supported a bookstore for grownups in what, ten years now? eBooks and Amazon sure were a huge game changer for the publishing industry.
I love, love, love Eagle Eye, just outside the city limits and also shop at A Cappella in Inman Park (owned by a Decaturite) and Tall Tales in Toco Hill. I also enjoy perusing the grown-up stacks at LSOS. Until considering it now, I thought we had more book stores in Decatur, but I guess their numbers have dwindled. I have never bought a book from Amazon unless it was a gift for a faraway person and the Kindle we bought for our daughter is unloved even by her…
I still miss Blue Elephant, sigh. Like LSOS, it was curated exactly to my tastes. I don’t know that I’ll ever forgive the folks that used to go in there to browse and then went home to buy on Amazon. Now of course, I order a lot from Amazon because it’s gotten less likely that I’m in the vicinity of a full bookstore when I need a particular book. Because I have Amazon Prime, books come in a day. And I use smile.amazon so I can support my favorite school. But I would give up Amazon in a heartbeat if I could have an adult bookstore in Downtown Decatur to complement LSOS.
I echo the comments about kids being able to walk/ride bikes to LSOS and shop on their own. My daughter loves to stop in on her way home from school, where she is greeted by name by Miss Sunny, who she knows from summer camps in years past. The camps are great! Hogwarts Camp is a fantastic expierience for your little potterheads, complete with an acceptance letter from Hogwarts and a trip to the Hogsmeade pub (Brick Store) for butterbeer. Great job, LSOS!
The summer camps really are great. I love living in a place where parents will get in line before dawn to physically sign up for summer camps months in advance. And I love that there is a store that my son can go to anytime and always feel welcome and always feel like there’s something there for him. He quite literally asks to go there every time we’re near the Square. We truly love LSOS and hope it remains one of the jewels in Decatur’s crown for generations to come. Oh, and I could just stand at the cookbooks shelf for hours.
Also, LSOS DOES have a grown-ups’ section. It’s carefully curated and every bit as wonderful as the kids’ selections. And if they don’t have what you want on the shelf, they will special order anything and can usually have it for you within a matter of days. It’s just as fast to order through LSOS and support a local business that gives back so much to our community as it would be to order from some faceless internet store, so I always choose to buy from LSOS. Bottom line: LSOS matters A LOT for so many wonderful reasons.
+1. The adult section is small, but yes — well-curated. I can always find something.
We have lived all over Dekalb County. No matter where in Dekalb we have lived, my kids (now teenagers) have been going to LSOS their entire lives.
The staff know them, they make book recommendations, and their programs for engaging kids (like giving them promo advanced copy books and then posting their reviews) are awesome. And they cater to the complete age range, from toddler to 17 year old. They are a huge community asset.
An added bonus are their events. I suspect that their author events on par with the best kids’ bookstores in the country, and their other community events (Root Beer Festival!) are great.
If my kids don’t want to see Scott Westerfeld next week, I might go myself
My daughter attended a summer camp in North Carolina this summer. When the topic of books came up in her cabin, for almost every book name mentioned, she was able to say that she had either met the author, or had attended an author talk. Needless to say, the cabin-mates were stunned and wondered where something like this was common place – no one else had met even one book author. LSOS has been such an influence on our children that they just expect to have this kind of access to major authors. I’ll bet that we have at least a hundred author-signed books on our shelves. It’s pretty incredible if you think about it.
YES! This. It is such a joy to see a child’s eyes when they meet their “superhero,” the author of their favorite books. My son got to meet Kazu Kabuishi last year and you’d have thought he was meeting the president or a real astronaut. He got all 6 of his books signed–books he’s been “reading” since before he could read.
I’ll never forget when my daughter’s love of reading “turned on” when she started reading the Spiderwick Chronicles. The fact that she got to meet the author just blew her away. And I was able to say to him, face to face, that he was the reason my daughter now loves to read.
It’s so great for children to think of book authors as their heroes. My son actually wants to be an author when he grows up! I can thank LSOS (and CSD’s superb teachers, of course) for this.
Though we choose to buy books as gifts at LSOS, I can’t say that we buy many books for ourselves there, or that we would do so at a “BIg Shop” either. Costs are too much of a factor, so we go to the library or buy them cheaply online (mostly the former).
Actually, I miss Books Again more than I do any of the stores that once sold new books in Decatur. I much prefer browsing in a used book store, and I’m more likely to buy something there than at a store that only sells new books.
When my kids where younger and where invited to a friend’s b-day party, the gift for the friend was always something from LSOS. I am a strong believer in shopping local and its is so important for kids to READ.
Also, recently my teenager had been given a barnes and noble gift card, so took him to the Edgewood store to use it. They did not have the book he wanted and the clerk recommended that he try LSOS. Normally, that is where we would have gone, but if it were not for the darn gift card. Don’t think the teenager has ever used the card – even the teenager would rather order books via LSOS.
I am interested in how this great institution helps create these positive feedback loops in a community. The amazing LSOS supports reading in our community, which helps our schools invest in authors, reading, supporting readers, which supports this amazing store….which then helps generate a reader friendly school culture… which makes people get little libraries… which makes people want to go to LSOS
LSOS is a great stop on a downtown loop… they are friendly and supportive and truly open to everyone wanting the ENJOY the shop not always about buying books… that makes it feel ok to send our kids to walk down to the shop…which supports the culture of reading…
I think their willingness, investment, commitment in being a “stop”, even when it doesn’t involve a purchase, is an incredibly smart investment in the long term. I have spilled a whole coffee over a book and they just smiled and said don’t worry. Short term thinking would mean that they got irritated…made me buy the book, etc. But they know getting a coffee and going in to check out books is part of a process that helps invest a community. And while I did spill coffee all over that book… I absolutely spend there in a way that makes their investment in me pay off. LOL…
This impact is do dynamic. Can other institutions (ice cream or clothing) have the same impact? I think there is something about reading/books/authors that is more dynamic, more multi-faceted.
So fun to think about!
Dave and Diane get the Nobel Prize for dream chasing. Who would lay their fortunes on the line for a bookstore?The writing was on the wall. These stores can’t make it. Yet, they did it anyway and this community gets to reap all the rewards of their efforts. To Dave and Diane, I can only imagine the many days when the bills had a lot more zeros that the revenues, especially during the recession. How you persevered is beyond me. For teaching my children that reading is an amazing, fun experience, and for marking my community as a place where children and learning are treasured, thank you.
Joy asks:
– does Little Shop of Stories matter to Decatur, and if so, how and why?
– whether Decaturites wish for a “Big shop” as well with grown-up books?
Concerning the second question – if the decision is to move in that direction, then stay with the same approach as with children’s books.
Previous commenters provide a great deal of insight that LSOS is not important to Decatur merely via the sale of books. So if the success of LSOS and its importance/why it matters to Decatur is more than just books, what other functions does LSOS serve, and how well does it serve it.
Perhaps Joy could start with Jane Jacobs’s – The Death and Life of Great American Cities to understand the importance of LSOS and other small and locally owned businesses, as it relates to Decatur. Jacobs’s analysis is notable for its attention to the microsociology of public order. For Jacobs, the city as a social organism is a living structure, constantly changing. “The sum of each casual, public contact at a local level …is a feeling for the public identity of a people.” Or as sfmaster shares above – LSOS functions as a positive feedback loop in the community.
The importance of positive feedback loops in Decatur:
It is likely that commercial entities (big box stores such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon) can provide books to consumers at a cheaper price than LSOS. What is not clear however, is whether, once one has factored in all the public goods that LSOS provides as a building block of Deactur’s social fabric…
– informal social work
– public safety (“eyes on the street” according to Jacobs)
– the aesthetic pleasures of an animated streetscape and interior
– the large variety of social experiences and personalized services
– acquaintance networks
– informal neighborhood news and gossip
…whether LSOS (and other Deactur businesses/commercial pillars) might not be a far better bargain in the long run than large, impersonal commercial businesses.
Why is LSOS important to Deactur? A thriving LSOS and other businesses are important to the social fabric and long term success of Deactur.
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Good questions Joy.
As I look at all the new Decatur store spaces about to open up, what’s going in? What retail categories make sense as brick and mortar anymore.
– Food and drink (always)
– Personal services (massage, hair)
– Cell phones (barely)
– Clothing? (not according to Zappos)
– Bicycles (hard to mail)
– Books (not for the last decade)
LSOS is unique because they are selling a community experience. Something a Bezos robot will never achieve.
Of course Little Shop is important to Decatur. Educational concerns these days focus on achievement and preparation for the coming educational experience. They forget how important the childhood period is for each individual: that the experience of joy, empathy, friendship begin developing in the early years. Little shop gives this period in life its recognition, its importance. It does not dilute its emphasis with hundreds of distractions for
adults. I admit that when I go there I am glad to find adult books I have read about in reviews. But it takes only a minute to be redirected toward children’s interests. I am there to find wonderful choices to be shared with my grandkids. Little Shop always helps me find them.
I can only echo what others have said about LSOS. My middle child, a teen, strongly prefers physical books to ebooks–thanks in large part to LSOS. She likes to go there with her friends. I participated in one of their book groups for a couple years and it was a great way to meet others in the community and talk about books.
As for adult book stores: I love browsing in bookstores and miss many of the area stores that have closed–from the small stores to the discount stores to Borders–but the truth is that the majority of books that I actually buy probably would not be for sale in a small independent store (yes, maybe they could be ordered…) Some of the reason for that is that I can get so many books at the library–the Dekalb library system has a pretty good selection and it’s so easy to reserve books and pick them up at the Decatur library.
Unlike my kid, I do like reading novels on an e reader–I have limited space for bookshelves in my pre WWII Decatur home.
Thanks everybody for all the great feedback. It’s pretty telling that the LSOS inspired 27 positive Internet comments. Kudos to Diane and Dave for making that happen.