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Book Club Dodson joins Boston.com's Book Club to talk about Mona Awads modern-day gothic fairy tale, Rouge. Wendy Dodson, founder and owner of Hummingbird Books in Chestnut Hill.

For Wendy Dodson, a Lincoln native and the owner of Hummingbird Books in Chestnut Hill, the COVID-19 pandemic forced into harsh perspective the essential role bookstores play in our lives.

I really believe that not in our lifetime, theres never been a more important time for people to read. Between COVID and our ability to connect in our virtual world, I just feel like we need places where people can come together again, and a bookstore is a perfect place for that, she said in an interview with Boston.com.

Before opening Hummingbird Books in 2022, Dodson had lived for 10 years in Jackson, Wyoming, where she owned the Valley Bookstore. She fell in love with the business and wanted to bring her experience to her community in Massachusetts.

She set up shop in The Street at Chestnut Hill, an open-air shopping center on Route 9.

The Chestnut Hill neighborhood did not have any bookstores before Dodson opened her store and she felt there was an urgent need for one, especially an independent bookstore with curated offerings for every reader.

Independent bookstores are really important. I try to curate a mix of books that represents everyone in our community and not what you would just find in a big box store, she said. A child of any background can come in, or any person can come and find a book where the lead character would be representative of the color of their skin and their background, she said.

Dodson said she wanted her bookstore to be a magical experience for children, especially. A place where they want to come and hopefully inspire them to be our next generation of readers, a place where kids would really want to spend a lot of time, where they could hopefully put down their iPhones and pick up a book.

To achieve this vision, the bookseller added an installation straight out of a storybook to the childrens section of the store, affectionately called The Great Oak Tree.

The painstaking installation efforts (which you can watch here in this time-lapse video) paid off. She said seeing families find joy in the tree (quite literally in the tree theres a reading room inside) has been heartwarming and affirming.

Kids love it. I become almost overwhelmed with emotions on a daily basis walking by and hearing an older sister reading to her younger brother, or a parent reading to their child inside the tree. Its everything I could possibly have dreamed of in owning the store, she said.

Dodsons dedication to providing a warm and welcoming environment for young readers has reached beyond Massachusetts to Beaufort County, South Carolina, whose school district currently has 97 challenged books, and more under review.

The bookstore partnered with Families Against Banned Books and Lowcountry Pride, two organizations working in book ban advocacy, to send challenged books to the district to be distributed among young readers. The titles arent available in the countys school libraries.

We [at Hummingbird Books] really believe that books unite us and censorship divides us. And that books really have the power to reach across cultural boundaries, connect readers and teach us important lessons. And we also really support freedom of expression and actively oppose the rising levels of censorship and book banning throughout the country, Dodson said.

This months Book Club pick is Rouge, by Mona Awad.Dodson will speak with Awad about the new book, which she called unique and thought provoking, on January 25 at 6 p.m.

In the novel, described by Simon Schuester as Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut, protagonist Belle is led into a beauty cult after her mothers sudden death fuels her obsession with retaining her youth.

Catch up on the latest Boston.com Book Club pick and join the virtual author discussions.

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This bookseller is fighting censorship in Boston and beyond - Boston.com