When educator Melody Wukitch left her job as a middle school teacher amid the pandemic challenges of 2020, she had no intention of opening a bookstore or a literacy business. Skip ahead to 2021, and she’d opened not only a store, Park Books, but a children’s literacy center, LitCoLab, in Severna Park, Md. At the hybrid space, visitors can browse books, sign up a child for reading instruction, or participate in a literary event or storytime.

Although Wukitch joked that her post-teaching plan was “to live my best life and read and sit by a pool,” she felt drawn toward books and into independent work with struggling readers. The hands-on, high-energy multitasking she practiced as a teacher translated into running a bookstore-plus-lab, combining a love of reading with instructional encouragement.

Her generalist bookstore and reading lab started out occupying 3,000 square feet in a mixed-use, plaza-style building, but she has since leased extra space—an unused workout studio and small offices—for events and meetings. She’s hired six part-time staffers including store manager Beth Gillespie, events coordinator Sarah Rifield, and programming director Emma Duma, along with a couple of volunteers.

Wukitch spent 13 years, mostly in middle school settings, “working with kids with reading differences and all sorts of special needs,” she said. At LitCoLab, which serves pre-K through middle grades, she wants to help early readers decode words, assist neurodivergent learners in practicing metaphors and figurative language, and support other students as they engage with English as a second language. Some readers come to her because they’re reading beyond their grade level.

Growing an Idea

In fall 2020, a group of families (mutually isolating as a “Covid pod”) approached Wukitch to lead sessions that would keep their kids excited about reading and learning. Because of her training as a K–12 reading specialist, she started a Zoom book club to supplement online classrooms.

“Before you know it, one of the moms who owned a psychology practice said to me, ‘You should rent my space. I’m not using my offices, and you could start to meet with kids,’ ” Wukitch said. Demand seemed strong enough that she called some of her teacher friends to encourage young readers, too. “By November [2020], I was looking at my own space,” she said. “I needed books, so I learned how to set up trade accounts. The more I was in it, I was like, ‘I should just have a bookstore.’ ”

Maryland’s Anne Arundel County serves 50,000 kids, “and we have 20 schools within 10 miles of us,” Wukitch said. “It’s a community with a ton of access. We’re mostly upper-middle-class, well-educated people. And the fact of the matter is, we did not have an independent bookstore.” (The nearest bookshop was a Barnes & Noble, eight miles away in Annapolis.)

When tailoring her lessons to young readers, she’d ask, “What are you reading at home?” or “How often do you go to the library?,” and found that many of them did not have a habit of reading for fun. “We have a community of high achievers, with 45 AP classes in our high school and private schools,” she said. “We have more therapists than you can imagine because our kids are pushed to be excellent. But no one is just going and enjoying storytime, having craft time, and going to the bookstore.”

Park Books—which has a general inventory of 11,500 titles—now offers free storytimes every Saturday morning, “and we always have popcorn and water. In the winter we have hot chocolate with our popcorn.” This year, she looks forward to handing kids Jory John and Pete Oswald’s The Big Cheese (Nov.), Andrea Beaty and David Roberts’s Lila Greer, Teacher of the Year (Nov.), Kate DiCamillo and Chris Van Dusen’s Mercy Watson Is Missing (Dec.), and Jewell Parker Rhodes’s new novel Treasure Island: Runaway Gold. Her go-to early chapter books are Wanda Coven’s Henry and Heidi Heckelbeck series, which she said have “the right amount of words on the page.”

Author events are a priority too. When famous sometime-author and full-time Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson came through the Eastern Shore in March, “I ended up renting Maryland Hall, a big cultural art center in Annapolis,” Wukitch said. Ferguson spoke with novelist Jodi Picoult, and Park Books sold 700 copies of A Most Intriguing Lady. On November 4, Park Books will host YA fantasy author Isabel Ibañez (What the River Knows) in conversation with Brigid Kemmerer, whose Defy the Night series finale Destroy the Day is forthcoming (Jan. 2024).

Adult authors are regular guests as well, including Bridgerton and Queen Charlotte author Julia Quinn, Angie Kim (Happiness Falls), and Jimin Han (The Apology). “I don’t do the traditional sit-down reading where you get a book signed and leave,” Wukitch said of her ticketed book events. “It's not just about the book anymore. It becomes about creating a culture of literacy.”

These days, Wukitch is on track to open a café before the end of this year, so adult caregivers have a place to hang around while their kids are learning. She’d like to rebrand as Park Books Place, welcome a monthly pop-up vendor fair, and possibly turn LitCoLab into a nonprofit, with services on a sliding scale. She knows she has accomplished a lot in two years, yet she isn’t slowing down. Her evolving space is “a new way to think about profitability,” she said. “I’m an idea person.”