Giannino Stoppani Children’s Bookstore in Bologna, Italy, is fundraising to help recover books after a recent fire.
On May 20, the children’s bookstore, which was founded in 1983 and is well known to attendees of the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, suffered a fire that caused an evacuation. Flames developed on the first floor of the library, and caused flooding of the store’s mezzanine floor, which is used for storage and as an office. The two employees and sole customer who were present when the fire broke out were unharmed.
The bookstore still contains more than 35,000 books. Stoppani staff are working through the catalog of books to decipher which ones are salvageable. To assist in covering costs to help repair books damaged in the fire, the store has begun a crowdfunding campaign and so far has raised more than $20,000 with support from the book community around the world.
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