Emma Caroline Brown
Reporter & Managing Editor
The second graders fall in line to head to the school’s library. The shuffle of small sneakered feet is heard until they reach the carpeted floor. They see a woman and a small dog at the front of the room waiting for them. For a majority of these children, it is the happiest day of the school year. Today is story time.
The woman finishes reading to the glowing faces and gives an announcement that make their smiles bigger and may forever impact their lives. The kids have just been told they are all getting a book for free. Emily Liner, the owner of Friendly City Books, is literally making it her business to give back to the community and change the lives of local children one book at a time.
Liner, who began reading very early as a child, thinks it should not be outside the norm for kids to start reading before starting school. Liner believes literacy is necessary to childhood.
“I am really engaged and like a big proponent of early childhood reading and that is why we do so many community outreach activities for kids,” Liner said. “I knew how much that meant to me when I was growing up.”
As Columbus’s only bookstore, Friendly City Books is nestled in the heart of the downtown area. The past four years have turned the bookstore into a community hotspot, and it has become a colorful haven for book lovers. The shelves line the store from front to back with books of any genre, author, or subject waiting to find its perfect match of an owner.
Liner has been using the store to steadily increase community readership, especially children’s literacy. This passionate drive to reach children comes from the store being founded on a love of books and impactful childhood reading experiences.
Part of Friendly City Books’ values is the belief that books can take you places and bring people together. From the owner, Liner, to the daily workers and interns, these values are shared and fueled by an appreciation of literature.
Sara Angelina Rente, a Mississippi University for Women senior and intern at Friendly City Books, enjoys the bittersweet nostalgia of working in the store as she sees children come in for books she loved as a child. A part of working in the store that never fails to leave Rente smiling is seeing children come in for a book, especially when they know exactly what they want. Rente’s own admiration for Friendly City Books comes from her fondness of reading and her childhood journey to find a group of fellow bookworms.
“It’s so sweet and refreshing cause a lot of my friends didn’t like reading, so they just didn’t read,” Rente said. “So, it’s very refreshing to see kids that want to read because it does have a lasting impact on what they can do in life.”
Since the store’s opening during the pandemic, Friendly City Books has started many programs that hope to engage community-wide readers while supporting a local business. Story times at the public library, classroom visits, book-of-the-week events, local author consignments, community reads and book release parties are just a few of the store’s regular outreach events.
Along with its outreach programs, Friendly City Books has reached countywide schools with book donations and reading events. Most of its children’s outreach comes from a desire to combat book inaccessibility and reach Columbus’s impoverished students through the power of books.
As the poorest state in the country, Mississippi children have a long record of low literacy rates. But the tide is starting to turn.
A 2023 PBS report showed in 2013 Mississippi ranked 49th in national fourth grade reading scores. In 2022, Mississippi jumped up to 21st place. The jump, called the “Mississippi Miracle,” has shown that in order to increase children’s literacy, there must first be encouragement.
Rente learned to read later in childhood because of a learning disability, but she gained encouragement through having tutors and extra classes. As a New Jersey native, Rente has seen the difference in her literary upbringing versus Mississippian children’s literacy. But she notices their similarities too- they have a thirst for reading.
“Seeing these kids, that might not have as much as I did, still wanting to read fills my heart,” Rente said.
In order for the bookstore to encourage as many kids as possible, it has started a nonprofit organization under the CREATE foundation, which is a Tupelo-based financial sponsor for community outreach. The nonprofit, Friendly City Books Community Connection, stands on a four-word statement: Books Bring People Together.
Since the nonprofit’s creation, Friendly City Books has donated more than 3,200 books. Within the first six months, the nonprofit allowed the bookstore to donate 1,400 books to local public schools and more than 200 books to The W for its community read program. At this rate, Friendly City Books will be able to reach students far and wide from Lowndes County.
Rich Sobolewski, an alum and web communications director for The W, recently became the manager of Friendly City Books Community Connection. He has been a long-time customer of the bookstore, which helps his in-store role of understanding a reader’s wants and how to advance the store.
Sobolewski shares the same values and goals of making Columbus a literary, reader-friendly community. He has seen first-hand the positive impact the bookstore and Community Connection have had on the community and K-12 readers.
“The great things that I have seen with the bookstore is bringing in people that we normally wouldn’t have been able to have access to,” Sobolewski said. “Having the ability to go and hand out books—so to walk into an auditorium filled with third graders and say, ‘Everybody gets a book’ like you’re Oprah is a fantastic experience to go and see.”
Friendly City Books has big plans for furthering its outreach and the capabilities of the store, but it cannot be done without local support. The store and the nonprofit both thrive off of donations, big or small. As a thanks for donating to the nonprofit, the store gives the donator 20% off up to the amount they donated to use in-store or online. This little incentive goes a long way in allowing the store to give free books to children, an act that continues to bring snaggle-toothed smiles to little faces.
One thing Liner has seen in her outreach with Columbus’s kids is that they love the Friendly City Books mascot, Scarlet the beagle. Standing tall at nearly two feet with a wiggling tail and jingling collar, Scarlet has a knack for encouraging customers with her cuteness.
Liner told of a customer once calling to see if Scarlet was in the bookstore so that the customer and her kids could come by and see her. Then, Rente said one particular piece of the store is her ultimate favorite part of interning.
“Obviously Scarlet,” Rente said. “She’s our favorite!”
Dubbed the “bookstore dog,” Scarlet works alongside Liner, her owner, in the store and as a therapy dog under the People Love Animals organization. Scarlet’s job for People Love Animals is to listen to children read stories to her. New, young readers finding their words do not feel stress when looking into Scarlet’s brown eyes as her small tail wags behind her. They just see a happy listener waiting to hear how the story ends.
So, when Liner brings her sidekick along to sit in on story times or classroom visits, the children are automatically at ease and ecstatic at the sight of Scarlet. Story times, free books and dog kisses are enough to make anyone happy, but for Columbus children, it’s the happiest day of the year when Scarlet comes to visit.