My Favorite Bookstore
I love books. If I could afford it, I’d have a room just for a personal library here at home and I would be practically living in bookstores in order to fill it. A few years ago I discovered what has become my absolute favorite bookstore. It has a bit of everything and I take my younger son on “dates” as he loves it too. It’s called Third Place Books, its name a purposeful one that speaks of the first two places being home and work, but that we need a third place to be in community. I love their philosophy, the business model and the feel of the place isn’t store-like, but fun and inspirational.

What my son loves most is the floor chess. We have to play a full game of chess each time we go, so I make sure we aren’t rushed. The chess set is beat up from years of wear and tear from toddlers seeing them as just bigger blocks to teens no doubt hurling them around during after-school boredom, but Jonathan overlooks all this and can’t wait to challenge me to a duel. He usually wins and makes surprising moves, but this day I finally had my revenge. He reluctantly shook my hand in congratulations with just a slight rolling of the eyes.
On a different day we attended his first book signing. I have wanted to do this for a while. One of the many blessings of Homeschooling is that as indicated above with the chess, we can make up our own days and do things that others can’t do so readily. We can go places during the day that would otherwise be crowded at night.
I had taken him to the store to stock up on more reading material and the extremely knowledgeable gal there led us to where there would be books most suitable for my son. All I had to say was, “Twelve years old, boy, loves adventure, whaddyagot?” and she began pulling books off the shelf and piling them up in my arms. He has loved each and everyone.
One of them was Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney. More of a graphic book about the not-so-fun adventures of a middle school aged boy, kids love it for its relevancy to what they are facing at school and at home. Jonathan gobbled it up in one week and we found out the author would be doing a presentation a couple weeks later and then signing books.

We attended this gathering which included field trips from various schools and soon several hundred kids filled the small stage area. Kinney had put together an awesome presentation that was highly interactive with kids yelling out questions and him giving funny answers. After his presentation everyone careened into a very long line and my son, Jonathan, patiently waited for his turn to see this “famous person” and get his book signed. He was elated to talk with the author of a book he enjoyed so much.

When Jonathan got home and he continued reading his next book, Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli, a fictional account of a young Jewish boy caught in the sealed Warsaw Ghetto in Poland during World War II, he turned to me and said, I want to meet this author too. When is he coming?
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