What do we offer?
**A hand-picked selection of books for toddlers through teens, and parents, too! We specialize in books on hockey, basketball, football, baseball, including many adult titles! Parenting, literacy, nutrition, bullying, special needs, autism. We love custom orders, small school book fairs, book clubs! Our sister literacy non-profit, Readers Ignite, helps us connect area at-risk you
th to reading resources! Contact us for help with your fundraisers! How did A Book Above start? After struggling for nearly eight years to find GREAT books for my children, I dreamed of a wonderful solution! A children's bookstore, one that has an inviting little reading nook, filled with large pillows to lay on, and maybe a "park bench" to sit at. The wall behind will have a great mural, with trees, blue sky, and fluffy clouds. The books on the shelves are filled with stories of heroes and legends, from today and long ago. Mysteries, stories and novels of all kinds. But all with a common idea. All the books in THIS children's store help to light dreams. Dreams of baseball stars, and basketball stars, ballet dancers and artists. Writers, dreamers and inventors of all sorts of things. Architects, astronauts, scientists, and doctors. Each child has a dream, a talent, a passion that is all their own. Our children are so precious. Each and every one of them. The store in my dream allows children to pull books off shelves that they want to read, not even just once, or twice, but over and over. Reading launches thoughts. Thoughts launch dreams. Dreams launch visions. Visions launch action. And those actions can change a child's potential. . . In the summer of 2011, I completed a great and EXCITING business plan. A plan for just such a children’s bookstore. A comfortable store, in Elmhurst, a western Chicago suburb. I have submitted the plan to accountants and business strategists, and they have agreed. The plan is great, and this area has a great population to support a children’s bookstore, and we opened into the holiday season of 2013. What makes our store different? We have a store that will help children gain a LOVE for reading, and a LOVE for books. And who knows WHERE that LOVE will take them!? Reading is a vital key in allowing a person to grow, and to dream. Whole populations have been “kept down” by not allowing them to learn to read, or to even have books. Nicolas Kraus, a novelist, recently commented, "If enough people stop taking their business to bookstores, bookstores – all bookstores – will close. And that, in turn, will threaten a set of values that have been with us for as long as we have had books.”
Preserving a love of reading, and creating a place where children can embrace reading. This is so vital to our children. Thank you, for sharing this dream. For empowering MY vision. And in turn, empowering the children who come to A Book Above. I am still working to bring all of my vision into reality,
but A Book Above is a great place to grow a love of reading... at any age! Gratefully Yours,
Carolyn Carrillo
