By Meghan Goel, Children's Book Buyer
and Programming Director at BookPeople

Two years ago, Austin author Chris Barton approached me with a simple yet intriguing idea: What if booksellers and authors could collaborate to help families build better, more diverse home libraries suited to our modern world?

of our 21st century world lies at the heart of my mission as a bookseller, so I immediately signed on.

Together with a cohort of Austin's children's book creators, we got to work designing a series of gift sets pairing beloved classics with newer favorites to inspire vibrant, interesting book collections right from the start.

The most personal reason is that I'm a parent too. My kids are in preschool, just the age this program is designed to target, and as I have read to them every day over the last four years, I have seen how much the words we've read matter. Those books have formed my kids' first impressions of the world. They've shown them that dinosaurs once walked the earth, that caterpillars transform into butterflies, that families all look a little bit different, and that stories offer windows to the world. The books we choose to read help them figure out what questions to ask and what concepts are worth learning. Few things are more influential than that.

To launch the program in 2014, we asked children's book authors and illustrators from around the country to submit their own first library favorites as well as to reflect on the words "Modern First Library" and what they mean. The result was a series of incredibly passionate testimonails about the power of words and the importance of giving all voices a place at the center of the story. We were incredibly proud to host their heartfelt essays on this blog.

we started in 2014. We once again invited some of our friends in the children's book world to contribute their thoughts on what a Modern First Library should represent and why it matters to them. Their posts will be going up through the end of September, so watch this blog, hear what they all have to say, and tell us why building diverse book collections matters to you. After all, we can't do this alone. 

It seems Austin readers agree. The permanent Modern First Library display has become the cornerstone of BookPeople's picture book room, and there are some really great books on that display. But we never intended to create a static canon. After all, there are a host of terrific books out there. In fact, we love so many, that we can't resist taking the opportunity of this anniversary to grow the program even more!

As we launch a new series of blogs on this topic, I encourage you to re-read the words that got it all started. And if you're looking for some great books to bring home, here's a list of our new Modern First Library inductees.

Marcy: I run the store with my partner (in life and business) Alicia Rizzi (who goes by Rizzi). I am just your typical lesbian mom from Utah who used to work in corrections, but radically changed my life at the age of 36. I quit my job to go back to school at the University of Utah. I was majoring in English and Gender Studies but ran out of funding for school, so instead of eating ramen noodles for the rest of my life, I decided to embark on opening a bookstore in Ogden. Rizzi is the strong silent type who holds down a full-time job and helps out at the store when she can.

When I was 9 years old, a dear friend of mine read to me Edgar Allan Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart. I had her read it over and over to me-I was hooked! That was my descent into literature, and I haven't looked back. This friend died when I was 15 years old, but she profoundly changed my life by reading that one small story. The store logo has a raven in it, and it is an acknowledgment to her and Poe.

As I said before, I ran out of school funding, and had no idea what to do next. I was doing small writing jobs, but they weren't paying the bills. As a family, our vacations centered around indie bookstores; we made sure to visit places that had an indie bookstore because they really give a sense of the community and what that community values. Rizzi mentioned that I should open a bookstore, and I truly thought she was joking. After laughing and saying, "That would be amazing!" she sat stoic and serious. That got the ball rolling; the very next day, I started to research and build a business plan.

Ogden hasn't had a new and used indie bookstore in years. Ogden also has a thriving literary community, with no general location to spotlight those talents. To be honest, I'm surprised it took this long to get an indie bookstore up and going.

I've been lucky that Ann Holman, from The King's English Bookshop, has been mentoring me. Some of the best advice she gave me early on when getting ready to place my first order for new books was to buy what I like and what I would want to read. From there, the community has been great at providing feedback on what they want to see in the store.