Once Upon A Story

I love this place! It is slightly more expensive than Barnes and Nobles, but what do you expect it is local and supporting local business is important. Everytime that I go in I end up buying more than I intend to because they always turn me on to great new books. What’s better is that the owner will do her best to find any book for you and she usually gets them in within a day or two. Yea yea I know the corporate store do that too, but I like the personal help and caring that I get here.
Make sure you get on the mailing list or check regularly for new events. She often has authors in for readings and book signings and this is a lot of fun if you have small children (kinda creepy if you don’t). My son really gets a kick out of having a book signed by the author to him and it is free to attend the readings so it is still fun even if you don’t have the money to spend on a new book.

If your looking for a treasure in Long Beach — you’ve found it! Once Upon a Story is independently owned and they are involved in the community and committed to bringing the joy of reading to the little ones in a gorgeously decorated environment! They have an extensive book/​gift selection … Check out their calendar of events — you’ll have FUN, I promise!

Just the cutest little children’s bookstore in Long Beach. Expensive, though. You can find hundreds of these little bookstores in Paris, but only one in Long Beach. It’s a great place to buy gifts for birthday parties and to go for story time, but don’t go too often or you’ll have trouble paying your mortgage (if you don’t already).

What can I say? As the mom of a 23 month old & a great advocate of supporting LOCAL business, there is no other place to shop in my opinion for children’s books in Long Beach. Great selection, the staff is VERY knowledgeable about their inventory, and if they don’t have what you want they can always order it for you via ISN — this goes for ANY book btw. In fact, I try to order any book purchases from here rather than go to one of the Corp Megastores, or Amazon, etc. again b/​c I really want to support locally owned businesses. Long Beach used to have some of the best bookstores in LA and Orange Counties (Dodd’s, Chelsea, etc.) and now we have almost none. Please support Once Upon A Story, won’t you?
Oh… and FWIW, they also have story time for the kids. A lovely activity for the little ones. We like to stop next door at The Coffee Cup for breakfast first.
C ~

I found this place on Unilocal,and I was really excited to go check it out. I went on a Saturday afternoon, ready to do some birthday shopping for three of my nephews.
The selection was really awesome, lots of cool and, more importantly, unique books, toys and novelties. It was actually almost overwhelming how many cool kid things there were here.
The sad this is that I was in the store for about 25 — 30 minutes and the person working there did not acknowledge me AT ALL. The employee was talking to an acquaintance (a couple, if I’m remembering right) having a long conversation. One of the guests was in a wheelchair and their chair was blocking the aisle to the back of the store (unnecessarily). I walked in and browsed around the front of the store — no ‘hello,’ ‘can i help you,’ or other acknowledgment. Not even eye contact. Then I literally (and awkwardly) climbed over product and the side of this person’s wheelchair (that the employee was talking to) to get to the back of the store. The worker did not say anything to me (i was right in front of the person), nor did the other people in the store offer to make room for me to get by, even though they easily could have. I looked around the back of the store for a bit, and then climbed back over (very nearly knocking things over), hung out in the front of the store for a few more minutes and then left.
I have to be honest, I was ready to drop quite a lot of money there, but I don’t really appreciate people that ignore me in a consumer situation. I not usually eager to give my money to places that can’t be bothered to acknowledge a customer in the store for half and hour. I’m not saying I would never go here again — they definitely have a cool selection of stuff. But why pay overpriced retail prices when you can find the same things online for much cheaper?
I hate to be negative about such a cool place, but I felt like I had to comment on the lack of customer service. I don’t expect stellar customer service ever where I go, but come on — not even a nod in my direction? When things like this happen I get the impression that people are judging me because of my body art and the way I am dressed, and they assume I have no money to spend, so why bother. This sort of discrimination really pisses me off.
*****UPDATE*****
5÷7÷08 — I just received a personal email from the store owner. She told me she knew exactly who the employee was, and apologized for the treatment (or lack thereof) I received that day. That employee is no longer with the business. I’ll give the store another chance. I really do love supporting small businesses when possible, so hopefully I will be more impressed than my first visit.

FABULOUS selection of books and with a lot of interesting books. The owners really take time to buy unusual books and have a great range for all ages of kids.
They have book readings and are very active in local events because it’s where they live too…
great store.

Well, it’s Dec. 23 and I just now started Christmas shopping. This was my first stop, a wonderful little children’s bookstore. This is yet another of those gems that is right around the corner yet somehow I never knew about it until someone reviewed it on Unilocal.
I really love children’s books, but it’s hard to find a bookstore that showcases them well. The chain bookstores are usually too sanitary, and the non-​chain bookstores are usually too sloppy. I liked that here they had lots of themed, timely displays (pirates and dragons are apparently so in right now), and I also liked that books were often displayed near complementary toys and games. For example, a Charlotte’s Web display had stuffed pigs, penguin books with penguin toys, dinosaur books with dinosaur toys, etc. There were lots of neat books that I could have had a lot of fun with if I had had more time to browse. I came here primarily for board books and picture books, but there was also a decent amount of readers, chapter books, and YA novels. It would be nice if it was a tad more organized, but that’s the librarian speaking. I found some puppets that I really, really wanted, but I stopped myself since I don’t do storytimes anymore. Speaking of storytimes, they do a storytime here once a week. My primary complaint is they simply don’t carry enough multicultural books, which is pathetic for a community like Long Beach. The staff was fairly friendly and gift-​wrapped my books for me. Too bad, because now I want to pull them out and read them but I can’t. :(

Fantastic children’s bookstore. Independently owned, very helpful staff. I would go back in a minute.