MILWAUKEE BOOKSTORE IS ROOTED IN PURPOSE

Ashley Valentine loved reading as a child, but even though books were a haven, something was conspicuously missing: characters that looked like the young Black girl she saw in the mirror.

“Now that I think about it, it’s sad,” Valentine says. “I didn’t think people like me were capable of the things I was reading about.”

She wants today’s children to think differently, so the UWM alumna opened her own bookstore and tutoring center in March 2022. Rooted MKE focuses on helping children of color, and it’s located in a bright, colorful Vliet Street storefront across from Milwaukee Public Schools’ central office.

“All titles in the bookstore are written or illustrated by or depict BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) characters as protagonists,” Valentine says. “As an educator, I had trouble finding books that were age-appropriate and represented characters of color, so I was always on a hunt to source books for my classroom. I knew there were many other parents and classroom teachers who wanted to support children in their love of reading.”

Valentine at Rooted MKE

Valentine earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology as well as a teaching certification and a master’s degree in exceptional education from UWM. She held a traditional teaching job for a while but felt a stronger calling to get into tutoring, and the bookstore dream was never far from her mind. So when her tutoring business outgrew her small office, she looked for a larger space that could include a bookstore.

Rooted MKE was born, and the response has validated Valentine’s vision. Children come in and get excited about books featuring, for example, superheroes who are all brown. Parents and grandparents tell Valentine they wish they’d had such a store when they were growing up.

“We had a Muslim family come in,” Valentine says, “and the little girl started crying because she’d never seen a book about brown people in a mosque that was celebrating being Muslim.”

– Kathy Quirk