Lawndale Pop-Up Spot, Chicago, Ill., opened a temporary, "pay-what-you-can" neighborhood bookstore pop-up this month in a 20-foot-long freight container retrofitted into a community mini-museum at Love Blooms Here Plaza. Block Club Chicago reported that the bookstore pop-up was designed as a place where "residents can pay what they like. The temporary bookstore is a pilot for a brick-and-mortar book shop planned to open next year in North Lawndale."
That location will be the new hub for North Lawndale Reads, a campaign by Open Books to "increase the early childhood literacy rates in North Lawndale and increasing the love for reading for everyone," said director Chelsea Ridley, adding that the goal of the pop-up bookshop was "to make it really feel like it is a bookstore in a shipping container, with bookshelves. And seating. It's not going to have any old, cheap books. This is going to have books that we pulled from our bookstores."
Like every Open Books location, children's books are free, and visitors will be able to pick their own price for other genres. Open Books carefully vets its donated books so each one is high quality and "feels like a cherished item for the person who now owns it," Ridley added. "We want to make sure that people see themselves in the books that they're reading, and also create pathways for you to see that writing is for them and reading is for them. The more that you are able to find things that interest you, that spark your interest in reading, the more you're able to start reading and continue your interest in reading."