Our Work

---

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 liberation for all readers, especially those from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and other historically marginalized 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 2021 alone:

• We hosted or participated in more than 65 events in partnership with multiple community organizations, including Mottley Kitchen, BX Writers, the Randall’s Island Park Alliance, Drag Queen Story Hour, and many others!
• We continued to develop creative and innovative school partnerships and educator programs, like offering continuing education credits to educators who attend intergenerational literary events with their students; curating a school library for Creo College Prep; hosting virtual book fairs as school fundraisers like this one; helping schools provide gift cards to students and families so they can build their home libraries; hosting a virtual book club for parents; and leading Reading/Race, our professional development series featuring monthly literary discussions on young adult literature by BIPOC authors.
• We hosted (Be)Tween Time (our middle grade book club) on Zoom, including events with Alan Gratz, Justin A. Reynolds, Pablo Leon, and Alda P. Dobbs attended by hundreds of young readers at schools all over the country.
• We created exclusive events like Know Your Body, which featured author Jessica Murnane and a guest panel discussing endometriosis and PCOS especially for a teen audience.
• As a member of Indies UNITE!, a collective of independent bookstores around the country, we hosted a fall series on children’s books featuring the voices of immigrants.
• We brought our in-person pop-up bookshop back to our community, including at the 5th annual Ode to the Black Fiddler Festival and the Randall's Island Harvest Fest.
• With the support of our community, we took Boogie Down Storytime from Zoom back to the Bronx and beyond every Saturday morning wherever we could in partnership with six different outdoor sites: Kelly Street Garden, Maria Sola Community Greenspace, Randall’s Island, Willis Playground, and Morning Glory Community Garden. And now we’re back at Mottley Kitchen, our original Storytime home, every weekend with our community of young readers and families. In 2021 Boogie Down Storytime hosted 40 authors, illustrators, educators, and volunteers who read 39 books to more than 700 young readers and families!
• We partnered with amazing authors and illustrators for virtual and in-person events for readers of all ages, including Ricardo Cortes, Susan Verde, Cozbi Cabrera, Yesenia Moises, C.G Esperanza, Sam Wedelich, and many, many more. We partnered with Youth Justice Network on the Books to Jails initiative to send 195 books (and counting!) requested by young people incarcerated in New York City jails, thanks to more than $2,100 in donations from members of the Boogie Down Books community. We also partnered with Brooklyn Book Bodega to help get books into the hands of NYC children.
• We hosted our 5th annual book giveaway on Juneteenth! At this year’s Spring Into Reading event, we partnered with Made for Me Books, Maria Sola Community Greenspace, and Drag Queen Story Hour to give away 800 books to South Bronx and Harlem readers thanks to donations from more than forty individual community members.
• 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 teacher Jazy Cintron, who officially joined our team as Movement Coordinator at Boogie Down Storytime.
• We're donating more than 10% of our 2021 profits to organizations doing important work in our community and around the world, including Children's Aid, Mott Haven Fridge, and Hope for Haiti.
• We kept moving forward and didn’t give up. We adjusted to the new normal and adapted innovative ways to build community. We re-envisioned our roles and our events without laying off or furloughing a single team member.