Given the challenges of the pandemic, many independent bookstores have turned increasingly to online sales to survive. Deborah Day, founder and CEO of “The #1 Black Children’s Bookstore,” Ashay By The Bay, Vallejo, California, made hers an online shop from the beginning in 2000. 
It survived the recession of 2008 and is still going strong. Fittingly, Ashay is a powerful Yoruba word that means “it shall be so.” It is also Deborah Day’s given name.
So! Day has developed an engaging and user-friendly website (www.ashaybythebay.com) with over 800 titles, from baby books to picture books to fiction and nonfiction for middle grade and young adult readers. Most have black American and African subjects, themes, and characters. But since there is a large Latin American community nearby she also has school collections of Spanish and bilingual books for them. More about her school collections in a moment.
It’s exciting to see so many books for kids about black culture, people, and history gathered onto one curated site. I have now added several titles to my staggering must read pile. For instance, though I’m not a fantasy or science fiction fan at all, I can’t wait to read Tomi Adeywmi’s West-African inspired fantasy, Children of Blood and Bone. Before the week is out I will probably also dip into Nnedi Okarafor’s 
imaginative and highly praised tale of magic and adventure in Nigeria, Akata Witch. As Day understands, good books for kids are good for everybody!
Before COVID, Day advertised grew her business by going to events, holding book fairs, and helping groups to conduct book fairs. She loved making in-person contacts that way. 
Now that those events are no longer possible she is relying more on social media ads, and she is hearing from people across the country.
The Pandemic also poses a challenge to her goal of getting children’s books about black subjects and black experience into the schools where they can have more impact on students’ understanding. Few schools are buying books right now and many students are doing distance learning. What an important time to build a home library, Day says. Of course there are many digital book available online, but the students are already screen-weary from school work.
Day loves books and believes and holding a book to read is a more satisfying experience.
During shutdown, people can consult the Ashay website for the lists of the book collections, organized by age/grade e level, that Day offers to schools, and find ideas for books to order. These collections include many core curriculum books, but also give a chance for some independent publishers to become better known. Here are just a few of the many titles on her lists for middle graders:
Biographies: The Truths We Hold: An American Journey (Young Readers’ Edition) by Kamala Harris ; 
Portraits of African- American Heroes, by Tonya Bolden , including figures from dance, law athletics, science, and 
more. Who Was Jesse Owens? By James Buckley 
and Gregory Copeland; 
Brave. Black. First, 50+ African American Women Who Changed the World, by Cheryl Hudson; Hidden Figures, Young Reader’s Edition, byMargot Lee Shetterly; Black Women in Science: A Black History Book for Kids by Kimberly Brown Pellum;
Award-winning Fiction:
P.S. Be Eleven, Rita Williams-Garcia; The Season of Styx Malone, by Kekla Magoon; Harbor Me by Jaqueline Woodson; Ghost 
and Look Both Ways, by Jayson Reynolds;
A Sky Full of Stars by Linda Williams 
Jackson;
Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes; The Red Pencil by Andrea Davis Pinkney.
Nonfiction:
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba;
28 Days: Moments in Black History That Changed the World by Charles R. Smith; The Talk: Conversations about Race, Love, and Truth,
edited by Wade and Cheryl Hudson; 
Hand in Hand: Ten Black Men who Changed America, by Andrea Davis Pinkney.
The Arts:
Radiant Child: The story of Young Artist Jean Michel Basquiat 
by Javaka Steptoe; Who is Stevie Wonder? By Jim Gigliotti; The Legends of Hip Hop by Justin Bua; The Rose That Grew from Concrete,
by Nikki Giovanni and Tupak Shakur; 
Poetry for Young People: African 
American Poetry, edited by Arnold 
Rampersad and Marcellus Blount; Who is Stevie Wonder? By Jim Gigliotti and Who HQ’; Misty Copeland: Life in Motion.
December 2020: an ideal time to get to know more about black culture from the excellent books being published for children. It’s also an ideal time to give beautiful, real books to children who’ve been doing schoolwork online all day. 
And let’s please bypass the chains when we buy these books (Amazon will survive the economic crisis) and support independent booksellers like Ashay instead. A triple win!
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