Readers of my first novel for children, Cornelia and the Audacious Escapades of the Somerset Sisters, will be sad to learn that one of the book’s real-life characters is no longer with us: the Biography Bookshop has packed up and moved elsewhere.

What’s rumored to be taking its place: yet another Marc Jacobs store, the fifth one on Bleecker Street alone and the seventh in the immediate area.  If this rumor is true, it would mark yet another instance of tourist-geared commerce supplanting the neighborhood’s history and sense of community; this once-treasured part of Greenwich Village is being transformed into a mall-style street of global brands.  Gone are the days of lovely local stationery shops and antique stores; in their stead, we have a Juicy Couture, three Ralph Lauren shops, and a Sunglass Hut.

Cornelia‘s readers will recall that eleven-year-old Cornelia visited the Biography Bookshop—which sat proudly on the corner of West 11th Street and Bleecker, across the street from the famous Magnolia Bakery— every day after school:

”[It was her] favorite destination.  She always marched past the tilting stacks of books written for girls her age and headed straight for the dictionary section.  There she inspected the books for new arrivals.  After all, Cornelia had an impressive dictionary collection of her own, and she needed to stay up to date.”

Later in the book, the fictional owner of the Biography Bookshop gives Cornelia a book about famous concert pianists, which includes passages about both of her musician parents; it is then that Cornelia - and the reader - learns more about her long-estranged father, whose absence has colored her entire life.

When Scholastic Bookfairs made a little documentary about Cornelia and her real-life world in the West Village (a film seen by millions of children), the producers visited the Biography Bookshop and lovingly captured the old-fashioned wooden shelves and tilting books stacks.  The store’s real-life owners—who always kept a behind-the-counter jar of treats for visiting dogs—told me that children and bookclubs from all over the country would visit the bookshop to see where Cornelia had spent so much time.

While I’m consoled that the Biography Bookshop was able to find a new, smaller home in a nearby neighborhood under the new name bookbook, I’m dismayed that it will no longer be a part of the West Village’s landscape or my daily life anymore.  This upset has given me a new relationship with Cornelia: when I wrote the book in 2005, it was, in part, a love letter to a charming, individualistic part of New York City; now that world is disappearing. 

These days, re-reading Cornelia has become a way for me to revisit what has been lost, and what continues to vanish every day. 

Mister Kinyatta—another real-life character who turns up in Cornelia —in the doorway of the shuttered Biography Bookshop.