Bel & Bunna's Books children's bookstore will open in Lafayette, Calif., by the end of May, Bookselling This Week reported, adding that the "823-square-foot store, which replaces a florist's shop in Lafayette's downtown shopping district, will carry books for children ages 0 to 18 in a friendly environment that will feature bean bag chairs, Lego tables, a story time seating area bordered by windows, and furnishings from the former Storyteller Bookstore, the only other children's bookstore in the small affluent city of 25,000 people for 30 years, until it closed in 2015."
Owner Clare McNeill said Bel & Bunna's will feature bright colors "and will have multicolored chandeliers on the ceilings with multicolored bunting going across. The plan is to have it be light and airy so you don't feel closed in by the books, but you still feel surrounded by them."
McNeill, who had worked in the information technology field since the 1990s, is now following her true passion for books and children's literacy. She said "the amount of support and enthusiasm I've had from people locally and from booksellers across the country has been amazing, absolutely incredible. I think there is a real resurgence in people wanting to read actual physical books and sniff the paper, and more than anything, they want their children to do it, too."
"I am so passionate about this, I really am," she added. "I've never been as passionate about anything in my life. Having children read and encouraging them to read is so fundamental. I'm an example of somebody who somehow stumbled her way into following her dream and her passion."