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| Ellen Mager (photo: parkbench.com) |
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Booktenders' Secret Garden children's bookstore in Doylestown, Pa., will close after 37 years in business. The Intelligencer reported that owner Ellen Mager "is mourning. The walls of a changing bookselling industry are caving in on her and her little slice of children's heaven.... The final chapter of her bookstore, she admits, was written last year when a water pipe burst in the store, ruining more than 7,000 books, one especially meaningful."
"It was a J.K. Rowling-signed copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone she signed when she was here in 1999," Mager said. "Cleaning that mess up from the pipe was exhausting at my age. With that and everything else, I knew it was time."
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| Booktenders' Wall of Fame | |
Mager hopes to sell the "crown jewel" of Booktenders, "four particleboard panels, several feet wide and stretching floor to ceiling. On them are some 200 autographs, illustrations, and personal messages to Mager by many renowned children's book authors who visited Booktenders on signing events throughout the years," the Intelligencer wrote.
"I hope someone will buy the walls and donate them somewhere where children and families can see them," she said. "Maybe donate them to the Michener or Mercer (museums). Or maybe to CHOP (The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia), where some of the children who have come with their parents to buy books here go to get cancer treatment. And the walls need to be sold all together, not a piece here and another there. The walls mean something together."
Mager added that she hopes to work at another bookstore: "I love the books. But I will miss the families most of all. You get to connect with the children and their parents, and they become like family. I've been to birthday parties and graduations of children who came to the store for books. It's those connections with all the familiar faces I'll miss most."