A children's bookstore called Sleepy Hollow Bookshop is now open for business in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., the River Journal reported. The store, which carries everything from board books to YA titles, is located at 95 Beekman Ave. and welcomed customers for the first time on November 5.
Once the store finds its footing, owner Leah Bloom plans to start serving coffee and pastry as well as hosting a variety of community events. She told the Journal that she wants to bring in authors to read to children and illustrators to draw with them. She also hopes that the bookshop becomes a place where children and families naturally gravitate and interact with each other.
"For me, if I had tried to do too many things all at once, I couldn't have done any of them very well in a small space," said Bloom, explaining her choice to focus on young people's literature. "So, I thought, here's something I love--I love getting books into kids' hands. In a store that's not this massive space, I can actually do that very well, and be able to provide recommendations to people."
Prior to opening Sleepy Hollow Bookshop, Bloom was a librarian at SUNY Purchase for more than a decade. The idea of opening a store of her own was in the back of her mind for a long time, and she remarked that when her sons were little, she always wished there was a place she could take them within walking distance where she could "set them free for a little bit, and it wouldn't hurt to have a cup of coffee while doing that."
She started looking for commercial spaces in 2019, but the start of the Covid-19 pandemic put her plans on hiatus for a couple of years. "When things let up a little with Covid, I started looking and then I was able to find this space, and then it really happened," Bloom said. "I don't think I believed it for a while, but everything fell in place. It's been really exciting."