A holiday window for a diverse city
Beloved Noe Valley kids’ bookstore dresses up for the season
Children’s literature has been a lifelong passion for Charlie’s Corner owner Charlotte Nagy. As an elementary school teacher for more than 25 years in St. Louis and Chicago, she dreamed of opening a bookstore that would specialize in the kinds of stories she read to her students.
“I always sort of knew that this was going to be the next chapter,” said Nagy, 53. “The question was where.” When she found an open retail space on 24th and Castro streets in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neigh- borhood two years ago, that dream became a reali- ty.
“I tell people I live in a town and I work in a village,” Nagy said. “There’s a lot of foot traffic here; families come in over the weekends. It’s a very diverse community. People come here from all over the world.”
Charlie’s Corner, named for both Nagy’s childhood moniker and her beloved dachshund (now deceased), is filled with whimsical interior touches: A giant tree hung with kites and with stuffed animals peeking from branches takes up much of one side of the store. The bathroom is painted with a mural featuring children’s book characters, and mushroom-shaped stools are scattered through the story-time area.
But since its opening, the store has been best known for its windows, depicting scenes and char-
acters from kids’ books.
Nagy chose “Goodnight Moon,” the 1947 picture book by Margaret Wise Brown, for her first window display, due to its wide generational appeal and also because “it takes place in one, easily recognizable setting: The great green room.”
The “Goodnight Moon” window, crafted from simple materials like painted cardboard and construction paper, is still up today. Children (and their caretakers) who come in for the store’s four-times-daily free story hours respond to the display enthusiastically, Nagy said. “They say, ‘There’s the red balloon, there’s the bowl of mush, there’s the old lady whispering hush, there’s the comb and the brush.’ “
Assisting Nagy with the store’s window designs is Charlie’s Corner artistic director Jeff Gomez, 26, who helps plan and construct the scenes in the store’s five windows. In two years, there have been homages to E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web” (with a spider web spelling out “Some Pig”), Roald Dahl’s “James and the Giant Peach” (complete with custom-made insects) and others with custom puppets created by artist Lauren Bailey.
Nagy said that originally she and Gomez had planned a traditional window for the holidays this year that would include “different children’s book characters all together in one window celebrating,” but that at the eleventh hour they decided to start from scratch.
“We really asked ourselves this year, ‘What does the holiday mean?’ ” Nagy said. “We decided it was about people coming together, whether it’s in a church or around a table.”
Nagy and Gomez then looked to a children’s book by San Francisco author Dave Eggers and illustrator Shawn Harris called “Her Right Foot” (Chronicle Books, 2017), which tells the story of the Statue of Liberty and the monument’s role in welcoming travelers and immigrants to the United States.
“Holidays remind me of family and what it takes to bring everyone together in one place,” Gomez said. “... It’s about being together. Dave Eggers’ book expresses that way better than I can.”
After a quick de-installation of the current window (Dr. Seuss’ “Green Eggs and Ham”), Nagy and Gomez carefully placed hand-painted cardboard and papier-mache figures from the book’s illustrations. People of different ethnic backgrounds and cultural dress are depicted in the scene, as is Lady Liberty herself at the center.
Asked if they’re worried about community reaction to a window that might be interpreted as too political in the era of immigration bans and debates about sanctuary cities, Nagy said no.
“Everything we do is based on community support and reaction,” said Nagy. “This is a very diverse, accepting community in the neighborhood.” Response to a window themed around “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls,” featuring portraits of prominent women, “was very positive,” she said.
After a few adjustments to the cardboard ships and hanging airplanes in the window — Gomez and Nagy didn’t want to create the impression of a potential collision — the display was done. For Gomez, the theme of immigration and inclusion has a personal connection: He’s a first-generation Mexican American whose 83-year-old grandfather just became a naturalized citizen.
As caretakers and parents began to line up their strollers outside the shop for the next story hour, Sonal Singh and her 11-month-old baby, Vera, stopped to take in the new window.
“This is just great,” Singh said. “As a person of color, it really hits me and speaks to the times. With the current climate with the president and everything that’s happening in the world, it’s nice to reflect on multiculturalism and diversity.”
Nagy agrees: “The U.S. is this inclusive, welcoming place. No matter where you come from you can celebrate your holidays as you wish. It’s what San Francisco is all about. We celebrate all the holidays here.”
“Holidays remind me of family and what it takes to bring everyone together in one place . ... It’s about being together.” Jeff Gomez, Charlie’s Corner artistic director