Follow me to Downtown Mesa where we explore an adorable alleyway—The Greenbelt Shops. At the end of the alleyway, tucked to the right is the coziest bookstore just waiting for you to open the door—Beyond Words Bookshop.
It’s like a breath of fresh air when you first walk in, whether that’s really feel of the A/C hitting your face after stepping in from the Arizona sun is up to you, but it’s like that revitalizing breath that makes you open for exploring, wonder, and everything else the literary world has to offer.
Kelly Boggs—owner of Beyond Words Bookshop—has one mission: to provide a place that provides books that are positive, make you think, and adds value to your life. How she achieves that is through a whole family bookstore. Her shelves are stocked with classics, fun rom-coms, memoirs and biographies, along with suspenseful thrillers and literary fiction. That’s just one side of the store. On the other, the shelves and baskets are filled with a plethora of titles for readers of all sizes. There are picture books for the pre-readers. The leveled reading books for beginning readers, alongside chapter novels and series books for the middle to young adult readers. You’d be hard pressed not to find a bookish gem in this shop. It’s not just the stocked shelves either. Every Wednesday there’s Little Lantern Storytime where a variety of people come and do a story time for kiddos, including children’s authors.
Kelly has always been an avid reader, but—like a lot of us probably—the busyness of life pushed personal reading to the edges a little. Being a middle school English teacher kept Kelly reading but most of her reading was along with her classes as they did novel studies. During her career as a teacher, there was a change that had the school asking Kelly to catalogue the defunct library books. Kelly got brave, asking for a pivot: what if they reopened the library?
The experience of re-opening the library reignited Kelly’s love of reading. Eventually her family would re-locate to Arizona. Kelly, wanting a shift from teaching, desired to start a business. She discovered pop-up bookshops online and knew that would be her business. The only thing holding her back was a name—nothing she thought of felt right. Eventually, while at a church event, she saw “Beyond Words” and knew immediately it was her shop name. From there, she did pop-up markets until she was given the opportunity to open her shop in the Greenbelt shops.
It’s been a year since Beyond Words Bookshop opened in Downtown Mesa. The mission, the actions, the goal hasn’t changed. Kelly believes words matter because what we read impacts our life—are we consuming good things or negative things? Both will make an impact. She believes that—after a year in her bookshop and throughout all the conversations, she’s been able to have with customers and regulars and Storytime attendees—words matter.
Words matter, what we consume makes an impact in our live. Is the impact a positive one or a negative?