Our Work

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Boogie Down Books is a bookstore-without-walls™ for kids, teens, families, and educators in the Bronx and beyond. Through transformative reading experiences and inspiring community events, we push the boundaries of what a traditional children’s bookstore typically does by curating, designing, and facilitating programs and services that center young people and the grown-ups who read with them. We prioritize amplifying literature by and about members of BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and under-represented communities. We are a mission-driven for-profit social enterprise that prioritizes people and principles, not just profits. 

• JOY: We design and facilitate reading experiences for children, teens, and young adults that promote curiosity, wonder, exploration, experimentation, and risk-taking.
• JUSTICE: We hold ourselves accountable for ensuring that our work promotes independence, autonomy, choice, equity, freedom, and reparations for BIPOC communities.
• COMMUNITY: We cultivate experiences for readers of all ages that promote interdependence, connection, sharing, compassion, and empathy.

• A bookstore can be anywhere there are readers.
• Buying a book is a sociopolitical act.
• All people should have access to books.
• All readers should be able to make choices about what and how they read.
• All readers should see their own backgrounds, experiences, and identities reflected in the literature they read.
• All readers should have opportunities to participate in vibrant reading communities.
• Literacy instruction should provide students with opportunities for choice, community, independence, and autonomy.
• A student-centered approach to literacy instruction can combat white supremacy, social inequity, and injustice in our schools, across our community, and throughout our society.
• If you have more, you should pay more.

Here's just some of what we accomplished in 2020:

• We hosted or participated in 98 events in partnership with many other community organizations, including Family Life Academy Charter School 2, the Mott Haven Library, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
• We pivoted and pivoted and pivoted some more, reimagining Boogie Down Storytime on Zoom, Middle Grade Book Club as (Be)Tween Time, and our Well-Read Black Girl Book Club as a monthly virtual event series featuring Q&As with some of the most exciting YA authors writing today.
• We gathered together for Boogie Down Storytime every Saturday morning wherever we could: inside Mottley Kitchen, then on Zoom, and even for a few weeks on a rooftop. We hosted 66 authors, illustrators, and educators who read 80 books to more than 1,600 young readers and families.
• We partnered with amazing authors and illustrators for virtual events for readers of all ages, including Jerry Craft, Renée Watson, Lesa Cline-Ransome, James Ransome, Mahogany Browne, Susan Verde, Jessica Love, Nikki Grimes, Justin Michael Williams, Brandy Colbert, Cozbi Cabrera, Kalynn Bayron, Lilliam Rivera, Cynthia Leitich Smith, and many, many more.
• We doubled-down on our commitment to transforming the literacy and learning experiences of BIPOC youth by launching two professional learning series for educators: a White Fragility reading group for educators who identify as white, white-passing, or white-privileged, and Reading/Race, our monthly literary discussion series featuring young adult literature by BIPOC authors.
• We partnered with Friends of Island Academy on the Books to Jails initiative to send almost 90 books (and counting!) requested by young people incarcerated in New York City jails, thanks to more than $2600 in donations from members of the Boogie Down Books community.
• We expanded our offerings for readers of all ages by partnering with other folx doing amazing work in our community, including chef Irbania Tavares and yoga teachers Halima Henderson and Jazy Cintron, who joined our Boogie Down Storytime team to lead weekly movement sequences inspired by books.
• We met authors and readers from all around the world who joined us for virtual events from Australia, Mexico, Norway, the Caribbean, England, and elsewhere.
• We held together during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, re-envisioned our roles and programming, and did not lay off or furlough a single team member.