Little Shop of Stories — Local services in Decatur

Several recent reviews of this bookstore, which detail the events of the recent StacyPlays book signing event hosted by this store, attempt to place the blame for the disappointment of a number of attendees on those attendees for their lack of reading the emails sent out by the store regarding updates to the event. Those people seem to not have the full story and as one of those people who feel very disappointed for their kids having missed the event, I have to speak up and clarify that the blame for this lies solely on this store and the event's coordinators.

My wife and I have never been to a book signing event before, nor do we live near this particular store with it being over an hour away, so this was our first (and last..) trip to this location. We read ALL the information posted on their website regarding the event, including the time(!) it began. We did this several weeks before the event, several days before the event, and again the day of the event. There were NO updates of any kind posted to their website regarding waves of start times.

We purchased our tickets for the event the day before it took place. We received NO emails regarding any sort of 'tiered' waves of start times before the event began. Why did we not receive any emails? Well, because they only sent that email out once and only several days before the event. Anyone who signed up for the event in the final days leading up to it would have no way of knowing that the store had implemented the tiered start times.

We got to the event shortly before the posted start time and were in line with about 30-40 people ahead of us when the store manager(?) Justin came out and announced the deal with the start times. That was our first time hearing about it. It wasn't because we didn't read our emails. We received NO emails.

My wife went in to the store and confirmed with Justin that the emails were only sent out several days prior to the event, and only once, so we would have had no communication from them about it. He also told my wife that we would need to wait approximately two and a half hours until everyone else had gone before our wave would be allowed in. With prior commitments that evening, we couldn't stick around that long.

In the end, we drove two hours, paid $5 for parking, and left with two very disappointed young girls, not because we didn't read our emails or read updates about the event on the website, but because they failed to post them, or any really, in a timely manner leading up to the event. You would think with the most recently registered people being affected the most with the changes to the start times, the store would have had the courtesy to send those people an email hours before, or at least day of, the event to make sure they knew of the changes, but we got nothing.

I cannot, in all honesty and good faith, say that we will ever return to this location, nor can I recommend their book signing events to anyone else after the experience we just had. Very...

My husband and two kids visited here today and while the store itself is nice and could have been a fun experience unfortunately we ended our visit upset. We read the sign at the door about masks being required so my 7yo daughter and I put ours on but didn't worry about my 3yo which didn't seem to be a problem. Right away when we walked in my daughter was asked to pull her mask up over her nose. Annoying but okay and we tried to keep a close eye on it while in the store. My husband came in after us, forgot his mask, and I sent him back to the car immediately to get it. He came back in and the four of us continued to walk around and a couple more times had to remind the 7yo to pull her mask up to keep from being reprimanded. While we're all walking around and looking I hear an employee (said his name was Jason) ask my daughter to pull her mask up again. He then asked her if she wanted hand sanitizer because he had seen her put her fingers in her mouth. When she said no thanks (she says that she had not put her hand in her mouth but maybe she did it without realizing so) he told he said "okay but now you can't touch anything else in the store." This made her very upset and she came crying to me. I have two issues with this encounter. 1. Regardless of my personal opinion on mask wearing, if you're really going to be that worried about it maybe don't bother having a CHILDREN'S bookstore open. Cause kids are gross whether they accidentally put their hands in their mouth or not. If you're really concerned then you should really be worried about my unmasked 3yo son but that didn't seem to bother anyone. 2. Nothing was ever said to me or my husband. Had the employee asked us to wash my daughter's hands rather than approaching her directly we would have gladly done so and probably would have avoided my daughter being upset and embarrassed. We weren't right next to her the whole time we were in the store but it was obvious that she was with us. We're visiting from out of town and really did like the store but maybe give the employees some pointers on customer service. We chose to go spend our...

It’s a cute store and definitely caters to kids. It’s perfect if that’s who you’re shopping for, but they do have a limited adult section, and I wish that they’d expend a little more effort in curating that collection.

The majority of it seems to be romance novels or titles from any given celebrity’s monthly book club.

They briefly had (for the first time) a display for “international fiction” with about 5 books recently, and if I recall correctly, all but 4 of those books were from UK-based authors… Not typically what one looks for out of “international” fiction even though I guess it technical fits the category. The store only recently started carrying greats like Murakami which is surprising to me given that other local bookstores in Atlanta have a depth of translated fiction.

I honestly think that Virgina Highlands books has a better, more diverse collection with more effort in the curation of books. That includes for the children and YA sections, which are larger. Little Shop of Stories is a very cute store to spend time in while you’re on the square, though, and the events they host for families are nice.

Probably a skip for adult reads unless you happen to be...