Today we’d like to introduce you to Dawn Kitchell
Hi Dawn, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I spent a long career working for newspapers promoting reading through a program called Newspapers In Education. When I retired from the newspaper industry after more than 30 years to open the bookstore, I had been working for the Missouri Press Association (for 15 years), helping newspapers across the state, and my local newspaper, the Washington Missourian (for 20 years). My goal was to encourage kids to read, using the newspaper as a tool. I worked with teachers and schools — providing classroom newspapers and training on how to use them. I created content for newspapers to use to help teachers use the newspaper in their classrooms with students. Locally, I also created — and worked with others to create — several programs to promote reading books. I was always disappointed that my community did not have a bookstore. For years I kept waiting, hoping someone would open a bookstore so kids would have access to all the books and authors we were promoting through the newspaper. Finally, in 2016, the journalist in me decided to start researching bookstores. I visited, telephoned, emailed, and researched bookstores all over. In 2017, I decided to do it! In creating Neighborhood Reads I tried to glean the things I loved about the bookstores I had talked with and visited. I purchased a historic home in downtown Washington and my family (and a local contractor) helped me renovate — and we opened Neighborhood Reads on June 15, 2017. I started with a few friends who volunteered… and within a few months we were paying them. Today our staff has grown to 14! Most are educators, some retired, some still teaching and moonlighting at the bookstore. My daughter, Bailey, is my “silent partner” — she’s an attorney by day, but helps me in so many ways, most of them creative. My passion is children’s books and creating programs to get kids excited about reading, but our bookstore is general interest, so we have something for everyone! I spent 30 years dreaming up ideas to get kids excited about reading newspapers, so it has been a fun, and easy transition to focus on ways to get everyone excited about reading books. Our bookstore is focused on what we can give back to our community. Our mission is to keep our community reading. In June we’ll celebrate 8 years of working toward that goal! Five years ago we created a non-profit foundation called the Community Literacy Foundation, to provide a home to a couple of literacy projects we used to operate through the newspaper: the Book Buddy youth literacy project (providing 102 new books every month to our school libraries and public library) and Family Reading Night (we just celebrated 25 years on March 7 with more than 800 people)! The Bookstore and the Foundation are separate entities, but they are intertwined with the same mission. There’s so much more… but hopefully that’s a brief walk!
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
I was a journalist/educator who decided to open a bookstore — not smooth at all, but so rewarding! And I’ve had so much help along the way from old friends and new friends! Our store is a perfect example of small town community spirit. Starting with my community bank, Bank of Franklin County — the president of the bank believed in my mission and passion even if he wasn’t sure about my business acumen! (He has supported my reading projects for many years.) I feel very strongly that you use your gifts and talents and surround yourself with people who have other gifts and talents — and that’s what I’ve done and continue to do. COVID was awful to go through, but in the end, it helped grow our business because it encouraged our community to see what was available close to home — and we were here waiting for them! Families turned to us for learning resources, books and and much more — we had a webstore in place and they used it! We had a front porch for pickups and they used it! It absolutely catapulted us to the next level. But it was a sad time because our store is all about gathering — and we really missed having families in the store during the worst of it. Selling anything, but especially books, against Amazon is a constant struggle — and it’s not a fair fight. We’ve tried to focus our business on what makes us different — we are a really cute, welcoming place where you can buy books! We have a great staff and they are our neighbors, we have storytimes and book fairs and author events and book clubs — so many ways to interact with each other. And we give — we support our teachers and our schools and community events and fundraisers in every way we can.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m most proud of all the things we do BEYOND bookselling. We host a summer reading program every year, and the past few years we’ve turned it into a game. Participants of any age get a game board, they draw a card on their visit that gives them a reading prompt, after they complete the read they return to the bookstore and we move them along their game board. We have hundreds of readers who come in all summer playing our game! We don’t require that they buy anything from the bookstore — our goal is just that they read, but each week they come into our bookstore and can see all that we offer. We have a contest, Missouri Reader Challenge, to encourage kids to read the Missouri Association of School Librarians (MASL) Mark Twain nominees — that one is for elementary students. I chair and our bookstore helps sponsor, Family Reading Night, a community celebration of reading that draws hundreds of families together to celebrate books and reading. This year we celebrated 25 years of Family Reading Night! We host storytimes on Saturday mornings spring through fall under the beautiful giant Dawn Redwood tree in our bookstore backyard. This Saturday we’re hosting a Bluey Storytime for 150 of our sweet young readers! I have spent my entire career trying to find ways to get people — mostly kids — excited and engaged with reading. That is what I’m most proud of. Nothing makes my heart happier than having someone tell me two things: how happy they feel inside the bookstore, and how they read because of something we’ve done.
What would you say have been one of the most important lessons you’ve learned?
Owning a bookstore is really hard work. It’s a complicated business. It’s a low profit business, which makes it even more challenging. My kids are grown and my only hobby is bookstore — so I eat, sleep and think bookstore pretty much all the time. And our staff works so hard. People have this myth that working in a bookstore is just sitting behind a counter reading books — we wish! We ALL love to read, but we don’t read at the bookstore — there is so much to do to keep everyone else reading!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.neighborhoodreads.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neighborhoodreads/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NeighborhoodReads
- LinkedIn: https://www.threads.net/@neighborhoodreads
- Other: https://www.boundtoreadblog.com/
