Happy Owl Bookshop, Manistee, Mich., is under new ownership. The News Advocate reported that longtime employee Teresa Feagins has purchased the business from Dan Bailey, who bought the store in 2014. The shop is expected to close from late December through January 2024, and will reopen as the Hoot & Honey Bookstore.
Feagins said she wants to keep the bookshop similar to what loyal customers have come to expect from their neighborhood bookstore: "We are going to change the name, carry a few different products, but it will be your independent hometown bookstore, as it always has been.... We'll be the same happy bookstore on the inside."
The name Hoot & Honey is meant to give the store an "outdoorsy" feel. "Little kids, when they come up now they say 'we have to go to the owl'--that's what they call our store," Feagins said. "Well, we've got to keep the owl as part of the name, hence the hoot. And I love bears, so that's where the honey bear, the honey comes in."
Feagins will add some new items to complement the store's current offerings, including a selection of teas, lotions and specialty soaps, locally made jams, and honey.
"I have loved books since I was a child, and when I moved to Manistee, I started working for [Manistee Area Public Schools] and I was the librarian at Jefferson School," said Feagins. "So when I left that job, that's when I started at the bookstore. And I like to say I can still play with my books but I don't have to go out for recess."
That motivation saw her through stints at Daul's Read-Mor Bookstore and Bookmark before moving on to the Bookstore, then owned by John and Priscilla Rulison but renamed Happy Owl Bookshop by Bailey.
Reflecting on his time owning the Happy Owl, Bailey said, "The town has been great--the people that come in just because they want to walk into a bookstore with books on the shelves and smells like books and walk on hardwood floors, have just been terrific."