Shelley Lowe, a former high school Latin teacher, opened Monkey and Dog Book Shop in a 120-sq.-ft. space inside a friend’s gourmet products shop in Fort Worth, Tex., in 2013 so that she could sell children’s books.
“I wanted to get more children reading books,” she says, “Fort Worth was a desert at the time. There were no independent bookstores here—except for a used bookstore. We’re too big of a city not to have an indie, so I thought I’d do this for a few years, until my husband retired.”
Twelve years later, Lowe’s husband has retired and now works part-time with Lowe and four other employees at Monkey and Dog. The shop has morphed into a full-service general bookstore with a large children’s section after relocating in 2018 to a 2,500-sq.-ft. space in the city’s cultural district, near three major art museums.
In nominating Monkey and Dog for bookstore of the year, customer Lee Cochenour wrote that the shop has become “a true community bookstore [that] currently has five monthly book clubs covering every age and interest.” Praising the store for its outreach to local schools as well as its vibrant programming, Cochenour added: “Regular customers are greeted by name when they enter the store. A dog from a business a few doors down often stops by for a visit. Everyone is welcome.”
One reason for the store’s comfortable ambiance, Lowe says, might be that Monkey and Dog does not carry political titles—though customers can special order them—in its 16,000-book inventory. “I want people to feel relaxed and happy and fall into a book when they come here,” she says. “It’s important to read about politics, but in-store conversations would go in a different way; they would fill up the shop. I don’t want to go down that road.”
