Brianne Colombo Photos courtesy of Brianne Colombo

Walk into the Gingerbread Bookshop, and it’s soon clear that this store on Main Street of the small town of Boonton, NJ, will be as much about the experience as any purchase.

It’s a place to browse, find a hidden treasure tucked into a shelf, come across a new author, or rediscover an old favorite.

Look past some shelves to the children’s room in the back, and visitors can catch a glimpse of green-and-yellow striped curtains that will be instantly familiar to parents and children’s librarians everywhere. Is that a red balloon up on the ceiling too? Yes, it is. No detail has been overlooked.

Customers are greeted by owner Brianne Colombo, who is also the director of the Glen Rock (NJ) Public Library about 25 miles northeast of the used bookstore she opened in early July.

“What I want for this space is to bring all of the beautiful things about library work into a space where people can bring books home and share them and gift them and enjoy them at their own leisure,” she says.

While some believe bookstores and libraries are at odds, Colombo does not see it that way.

“At no point do I ever feel like libraries and bookstores should or have any reason to be competing with one another,” she says. “I own books and I check them out from the library. I look for bookstores and libraries all the time. To me, they’re not mutually exclusive, they’re complementary.”

In Glen Rock, her library and the local independent bookstore partner on events and share each other’s spaces.

“It’s wonderful,” she says. “It helps create these vibrant, third places for community members that I feel like everyone is just looking for.”

Her store has now become one of those places, and it offers a bit of both worlds for those who visit.

“I can’t tell you how many families come into the store, sit down, read a book, don’t purchase it, and leave, and I am ecstatic about that,” says Colombo. “It makes me so happy that I’ve seen the same families over and over come and sit at this table. This is my childhood table. Sit at this table and read together. It doesn’t matter to me if they’re purchasing something or not.”

What matters, she says, is that community members feel that Gingerbread is an extension of communal space like that of the library.

Soon, she wants to offer story time in that Goodnight Moon–themed children’s space and possibly partner with the local public library. For now, though, it’s a place for visitors to wander until they happen upon their next read.

“I’m really hoping that customers walk in and don’t know exactly what they will find,” Colombo says. “I’m hoping that they’re just going to browse and something will call out to them. Sometimes people ask me for recommendations, and we have wonderful conversations, and then I can kind of direct them. But ultimately, my favorite customer is the customer who is just walking in very much like, ‘Let me see what speaks to me.’”

Colombo’s obsession with sharing books began in her childhood basement where she categorized her family’s collection and created pockets for cards to check the titles out to her siblings, cousins, and neighbors. She loved to play library and store and harbored a dream of one day opening her own bookstore.

She started her library career as a volunteer at her local library when she was in high school. At 17, she was offered a job at the front desk.

“I thought it was like the best job,” she says. “I was checking things out. I was checking things in. I loved it. I enjoyed all the aspects of it. I helped in all the departments. I was working in the children’s department. I was doing administrative stuff for the director. I was their IT person. I was really raised by this community of library women who were all like near retirement age and who had all this like wisdom to share with me about their experiences in the public library.”

She went to college and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degree in English literature. When she was approached about taking a soon-to-be vacant children’s librarian position at her hometown library, she went back to school for her MLIS. In 2013, she took over as children’s librarian.

“We had such a bustling children’s apartment,” Colombo says. “There were 800 kids in our summer reading program that year. It was just a program that had been loved and curated by this librarian who had been there 25-odd years. There was just so much love and excitement poured into that department. I really wanted to continue that and make it grow. And it was so fun.”

At one point, she also took on the position of assistant director, and when the director was leaving, she moved on to that position. Then, the library fun was a bit lost.

“I had no idea I was going into a job that was so wrapped up in local politics,” she says. “It was very disheartening.”

Colombo went on to be a consultant for local libraries before returning to the director’s role at two different branches. She enjoys the library where she works currently but plans to transition to the store full-time in 2025.

For now, she splits her time, enjoying her first foray into owning a business despite the many people who questioned her decision. Her joy in her space is visible as she sits in the children’s section and shares her story.

Colombo takes donations from the public on Fridays. Anyone who brings in five books receives a gingerbread cookie that Colombo bakes using her grandmother’s recipe. What she receives and doesn’t want, she donates to local libraries.

In the meantime, she seeks to fill the revolving inventory, which she curates with the same care given to her library collection but without the political pressures and watching eyes of a board. She spends her free time searching yard sales, library sales, used bookstores, online stores—anywhere books may be.

“I am a serendipitous book browser, so I don’t know what to expect, and I love that about searching for books,” she says. “I love not knowing what I’ll find, and when I see something, I am very excited to bring it back to the shop for sale. Then, it is equally exciting to you when somebody comes here and finds it. It is best feeling. I was just at a sale and I found Julián is a Mermaid. And I was like, ‘Wow, I can’t believe this is sitting right here for me to buy.’”

Not long after, it was on the shelves in the Gingerbread Bookshop children’s section, a treasure waiting for someone new to discover.