Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day with Guest Blogger Jenny Milchman

“Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing…It must be all around us. In this garden—in all the places. The magic is in me—in all of us.” —The Secret Garden

These famous words by Frances Hodgson Burnett adorn the walls of my local bookstore.

For me, bookstores are the magic. That’s why I began Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day.

When I was a child, two places besides my home offered respite, bookstores and libraries. (And I promise: as soon as Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day is firmly entrenched, Take Your Child to a Library Day will be next!)

There were four independent bookstores in my not-large town when I was growing up. Four. Each had a unique identity of its own. One had books you couldn’t find anywhere else. Another had everything that was popular with my classmates. The other tended toward big books with color photos, its children’s section hidden.

I watched as the wares began to tend more and more toward cards and gifts. I watched as one morphed into a toy store. Another closed and a restaurant came to inhabit the space.

We have two bookstores left in town, and I realize that makes us lucky.

When my children were born, I began taking them to story hour at the bookstore long before they could sit up for it. I held them in my arms so we could all listen. I would get a cup of coffee—and often a book. The bookstore was a place of respite for me again.

How many children, I wondered, knew the pleasures of time spent in a bookstore?

I floated the idea for Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day in late November 2010. If it were celebrated on the first Saturday of December, maybe it would encourage people out of the big box stores and into bookstores for holiday shopping. The Day could support local businesses as it enriched children’s lives.

Bloggers took the idea for the Day viral, the publishing industry e zine, Shelf Awareness, and the American Booksellers Association’s magazine picked up the story, and within two weeks, eighty bookstores were celebrating.

In the intervening year, I decided to visit some of the participating bookstores, and so we took our family on the road. We drove from New Jersey to Oregon, stopping at sixty bookstores along the way. My kids were not just going to story hour now—they were getting a roadside view of our country, seen through the prism of a bookstore.

And what a country it is. Bookstores are hubs of the community. Book clubs meet there, and writers groups; churches hold socials, and home-schooling families congregate. One bookstore we stopped at has an amphibian room decorated with the skeletons of animals, which the son’s owner collected for science class.

The cross-country trip helped Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day grow to over 250 stores participating in almost every state. As the second annual Day approaches on December 3rd bookstores have hung posters, distributed bookmarks, planned author events, baked cookies, and blown up balloons.

I have goals for the third annual Day next year. For one thing, I would like to establish grants for children who are unable to visit bookstores on their own. The grants would provide transportation for the child and a parent or caregiver, plus offer a gift card from the bookstore.

Maybe the biggest goal I have for the Day is what it can say about the world we’re creating, each and every one of us, every day. A place where we value uniqueness and the slower pleasures of interacting with people who know our likes and dislikes. A place where we stop in and say hello instead of just clicking a button. A place filled with treasures we can see and touch and smell.

I want my children to grow up in a world like that.

I want them to be surrounded by magic.

Jenny Milchman is a suspense writer from New Jersey. Her short story ‘The Very Old Man’ has been an Amazon bestseller, and another short piece will appear in the anthology ADIRONDACK MYSTERIES II in fall 2012. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the Made It Moments forum on her blog. Her debut novel, COVER OF SNOW, will be published by Ballantine in early 2013.