Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid, co-owners of the Reading Reptile children's bookstore, Kansas City, Mo., "are transitioning out of that business and turning their energies toward what they say will ultimately be something resembling a museum dedicated to children's literature," KCUR reported.
"We're inventing something that doesn't exist," Cowdin said. "We're creating a building filled with narrative." He described the Rabbit Hole as "the world's first explora-storium," modeled after the City Museum in St. Louis and the Exploratorium in San Francisco. A prototype exists in a storefront at 110 Southwest Boulevard, where "the space provides a glimpse of the couple's larger vision: a building between 50,000 and 100,000 square feet, home to changing galleries where visitors will 'walk through a story cover to cover.' "
The Rabbit Hole is a nonprofit. Cowdin said the organization had been in a "quiet fundraising" period support and will launch a public capital campaign later this year. Its national advisory board includes Lisa Campbell Ernst, Shane Evans, Kate DiCamillo, Linda Sue Park, Daniel Handler (Lemony Snicket), Brian Selznick and Jon Scieskza.
"Authors will be coming all the time," Cowdin said. "It will be a complex, a hive of children, young people and adults. We're appealing to parents and kids--this will not be a place where you drop your kid off."
Cowdin and Pettid "are leaving their more (if not entirely) traditional retail business at a time of significant disruption in the bookstore business, but they've had this idea for more than 20 years," KCUR noted. "We just want to go with the part of it that's the art we love," Cowdin said. "We will expand the conversation around literacy."