Patty Norman of Copperfield’s Launches the Bookstormer Foundation

Patty Norman, children’s specialist at Copperfield’s Books in Petaluma, California, launched the Bookstormer Foundation with the 2019–2020 school year on August 1. In coordination with Copperfield’s, the foundation aims to provide books for students who attend author events at Title 1 or low-income schools in the Sonoma, Marin, and Napa counties of California.

Norman, who has worked at Copperfield’s for the past 16 years and counting, told Bookselling This Week that one of her responsibilities as children’s specialist has been coordinating many author visits to schools. Last fall alone, according to the Bookstormer Foundation’s website, the store facilitated 30 author visits to 58 schools; in total, 11,890 students and 550 teachers attended presentations.

Design by Shawn Harris

Over the past few years, Norman said, she has tried various ways to get books in the hands of children at Title 1 schools. “I used to hear a lot about the schools in Texas, how they just buy all the kids’ books, but schools in California aren’t funded that way,” she said. “So, it’s never happened here.”

But exposing children to books is important; as booksellers, she noted, “our biggest job is that kids feel like they’re recognized and respected and welcomed in bookstores, whoever they are. They need to know this is a place they can come and not feel like they’re not smart enough or not interested in books enough.”

To bring authors to schools regardless of economic standing in California, Norman began booking an author for three visits in a day in 2010 — one at a lower-income school, one at a medium-income school, and one at a higher-income school. By placing authors at a variety of different schools, Norman said, she could get books in the hands of children who might not be able to afford them. The money spent on books at a higher-income school, she added, could subsidize a lower-income school that may not be able to buy books.

“I can’t go to three low-income schools in one day,” Norman said. “I will sell no books, and the publisher will not be happy. So, I just kept trying to play with different ways to do things.”

In an effort to continue providing books for low-income students, Norman applied for a grant in 2012 and received funding for a year, she told BTW, noting that she’s also received funding from a local business, but thought that there had to be a better, more sustainable way to continue getting books to children in underserved communities. The Bookstormer Foundation received sponsorship from LiteracyWorks, an organization focused on increasing literacy skills in adults and families, and is currently a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Norman, who attends most of the author visits coordinated by Copperfield’s herself, shared that she’s gotten to witness the impact that receiving a book and going to an author visit can have on a child, which, along with her other responsibilities at Copperfield’s, inspired her to launch the organization.

Each book children receive from the foundation includes a special book plate, pictured above.

In one instance, she said, Copperfield’s facilitated a visit with author/illustrator Rhode Montijo, who spoke to students in English and Spanish. The students could see themselves in him, she said, noting that the author also taught students how to draw one of the characters in his book. After observing the students’ drawings, she said, he was taken with one student in particular, a boy wearing a hoodie with the hood up. “At the end of the event, he called him over and was like, ‘You need to keep at it. You’ve got talent.’ And the kid nodded and skipped away.”

After watching the exchange, a teacher told Norman that that was a huge moment — the child, who had pushed his hood back, hadn’t done so all year; she said his father berated him for liking to draw. “Getting to witness things like that … we don’t [always] get to know what we’re doing for kids, but we can take things like that and know it’s important,” she said.

In addition to her work in schools, Norman said she’s also been able to establish the Petaluma Copperfield’s location as a central hub for children in the community to come in and feel comfortable. She noted that at the beginning of every author visit, she reminds students that they’re always welcome at the store. Said Norman, “I tell them, you do not have to buy a book to come to a bookstore, you just have to like books.”

She added that she’s also starting to see more children who are not English-speaking and might not be comfortable walking into a bookstore come in to sit and read or do their homework.

Moving forward, Norman said she’d like to see the Bookstormer Foundation as something that can not only sustain itself, but grow big enough to become a model for other bookstores.

“There are all sorts of great things that we could have happen,” she added. One of her bigger dreams is for the foundation to expand into a domestic student exchange program or a summer camp where readers are brought together through bookstores in the same vein as Faith, Hope, and Ivy June by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, which follows two girls from different parts of Kentucky who participate in a student exchange program.

“Long term, maybe that would happen. Short term, I’d like to get books in kids’ hands,” said Norman.

Booksellers who would like to learn more about the foundation can e-mail Patty Norman or the Bookstormer Foundation directly. Title ” California-area schools that are interested in hosting an author event and working with the Bookstormer Foundation can fill out an application online.