The Magic of Books

A floor-to-ceiling collection of carefully curated books, categorized by genre and vintage decor, greets you when you enter. You can pull up a chair and snuggle up with a book. Yes, there’s even a fireplace and a designated space for story hour.

Welcome to the Gingerbread Bookshop. The Main Street storefront opened its doors almost two years ago and has a few stories of its own to tell—starting with the owner, who is as well-read as the books on display. Meet Brianne Colombo, a seasoned children’s librarian and a newly minted mom who is starting a new chapter in her life.

The bookshop and its part-time hours allow her to balance baby and business, while a built-in story time allows her to have both. That’s just one of the perks that come with the territory of running your own show, and it’s been a long time coming, even before the arrival of her baby boy, Roman. While she thrived in the town library setting, Colombo longed to be her own librarian and in charge of her own books.

“I spent 18 years working in town libraries,” she says. “I wanted my own space where I could share my own interests with the world. I’ve been dreaming up this space for a long time.”

She knew the downtown well, including Time’s Tin Cup, a collectable shop that relocated to Denville, leaving a vacancy that Colombo pounced upon. The niche space with its wooden floors fits her own narrative of preserving and promoting print nostalgia.

In true librarian fashion and even before her own foray into motherhood, Colombo created a child-friendly area for story hour with designated days, one for babies and the other for toddlers. A vintage stove in the culinary section speaks to her passion for repurposing items otherwise destined for landfills. A whimsical board of “Boontonopoly” hangs on the wall, and a wooden sewing machine of sorts adds that much more vintage flavor.

“Everything in here is second-hand,” she says. “That stove? I found it on a curbside in Boonton.”

Even her gently-loved book collection was curated by way of donations and, for the most part, still is.

“Every Friday, donate five books, get a gingerbread cookie,” Colombo says. “It’s a fun exchange: a give-and-take that creates community.”

What better way to bring people together than over cookies plucked from her grandmother’s recipe, a few good books, and a dog or two–yes, there’s dog treats, too. Tasty treats aside, Gingerbread pays homage to children’s tales–think Hansel and Gretel–and embodies the essence of quaint. On a more personal note, the spicy and mostly seasonal cookie offering is a nod to her ancestry, namely her German-born grandmother and the rural village in Hungary where she came of age.

“If it was a good farming year, the people in the village would go to the market in the bigger cities for trading, such as ingredients and spices to make gingerbread,” Colombo says. “It was a ritual and my heritage.”

The same could be said about reading. Raised in a reading-forward family, Colombo basked in books. She remembers her father reading to her and her three siblings from a rocking chair. As a young child, she channeled her inner librarian and spent countless hours in the basement organizing her family’s collection, complete with pockets for cards, so that family members could check out the books.

“I was pretty much raised in a library,” she half-jokes.

She also looked to books as portals or escapes to otherwise unknown worlds.

Her love of literature naturally played a role in her career choice. Colombo boasts two masters from Rutgers University, one in English Literature and the other in Library and Information Sciences.

Since the grand opening in July 2024, the shop has operated on a mostly weekend schedule. She was still working as director of the Glen Ridge Public Library. In leading up to this moment, she amassed a decades-worth of books, and the community came running with more. Much like a librarian, she changes up inventory regularly and stands ready to impart her wealth of knowledge from the book world and beyond.

She even knows the storied walls of the building of her shop, and it contains as much history as it does books.

“This building goes back to the 1890s,” Colombo says. “It used to be a horse harness shop run by Charles Hopkins. People would bring the horses out back on Plane Street to be fitted.”

There’s also a basement of sorts, three levels deep and very possibly part of the Underground Railroad, she adds. “And the post office used to be upstairs. They’re now apartments,” she says.

Backstories aside, the future of books is in our hands. “Now more than ever, people crave the physicality–the experience,” Colombo says. “And that goes for in-person conversation, too.”

Her shop offers the opportunity for both.

“The oldest shop in the world is a bookstore,” Colombo says. “It stood the test of time and tech.”

End of story.

Gingerbread Bookshop is located at 410 Main St. in Boonton. Visit gingerbreadbookshop.com for more information.