Research at a Local Bookstore

For my research I went to the B.Dalton Bookstore at Ballston Common Mall. It is part of a small chain of bookstores, mostly found in malls, that is now owned by Barnes and Noble. Ballston is a neighborhood of Arlington, VA located just west of Washington, DC. The population of Ballston is mostly young working singles near the center of the neighborhood and families (primarily white and Hispanic) a little further out from the center of town.

When observing in the bookstore, there were not a large number of books that represented diversity. There were some books that portrayed diversity in characters, or directly such as in Is there really a Human Race? by Jamie Lee Curtis, however I found that many of the books represented characters in very stereotypical way. For example, many of the children's books in the Baron's Books series, which address specific phonics sounds, had token African American or Asian characters.

The children's section is located in the back, left section of the store. There are about 4, 5 foot bookshelves arranged by gender and topic. On the main wall there were many well known book titles such as Mo Williams The Pidgeon Finds a Hot Dog and many Dr. Seuess titles. There were not many books titles that addressed more critical social issues, such as might be found in a bookstore like Busboys and Poets.

As noted for my post on the library, there are many Hispanic residents in Ballston, so it was good to see books in Spanish quite prominently displayed in the store. However, they were mostly titles like Harry Potter and Curious George translated into Spanish. This does allow these students access to the books, however there is still a cultural divide when these books place readers in cultures that are not like their own. I would have liked to see more titles by Spanish authors that readers could make more personal connections to.