Back Porch Book Chat: Lucy Gundersen (Mom, Business Owner)

Back Porch Book Chat: A casual, virtual conversation about books. Join us as we chat with book lovers like ourselves about a topic we all love! Our guest today is Lucy Gundersen, cofounder of Storyglory Kids. She chats with us about reading with her family, starting a book-related business, and more! Interview conducted by Betsy.

Getting to Know Lucy Gundersen

Before we begin, tell us what beverage you’d like as we sit in our (virtual) rocking chairs on this late spring day: Sweet tea? Lemonade? La Croix? Ice water? Perhaps you always enjoy a good cup of HOT tea or coffee?

Do you have any Chick-fil-A milkshakes back there? No whipped cream please, gotta keep it healthy!

Excellent suggestion! We’re big fans of Chick-Fil-A shakes ourselves, and the summer peach ones are just around the corner!

Our readers don’t know you yet, Lucy, so I’d love for you to share some background with us: Tell us a bit about your family, your favorite ways to spend time together when everyone’s at home, and your child’s school. If you’d like, you can also tell us what part of the country you’re located in.

I’ve been married to Mark for eleven years, and we have one 5-year-old miracle, John. And we just got the sweetest Golden Retriever puppy named Archie, who will require his hundredth daily trip outside any minute.

My family lives in New Jersey, and we love minimally scheduled weekends here that fill up with spontaneous adventures and gatherings. We love closing out a good church coffee hour (although you may have already gathered that I unfortunately don’t drink coffee). And we do a lot of quick road trips to visit grandparents in one direction, the Jersey Shore in another direction, or friends in our former stomping grounds, New York City, in another. John has always been a great reading buddy, and some of my fondest memories with him involve a book on a long subway ride or during a Central Park picnic.

Oh, puppies are so much fun (and so much work!).

Reading in the Midst of Real Life

What books has your family particularly enjoyed this past year?

In the past year, maybe two, we have gotten to dive deep into chapter books at last. I read a few aloud to John as an infant way back when – so that I could read aloud for longer stretches – but we mostly stuck to the infant “classics” at that age (no, that’s not my monkey!).

Graduating to actual picture book stories in toddlerhood opened up a whole new world, and bringing chapter books into the mix more recently has had a similar effect. Some favorites include Narnia, The Tale of Despereaux, Stuart Little, and the MinaLima edition of The Jungle Book. 

Our very favorite chapter book has been the Joe Sutphin edition of Little Pilgrim’s Progress. That one sat on our shelf many months before we cracked it open because it looks and weighs like a coffee table book – beautiful to look at but intimidating to think of reading cover to cover. I’m wondering if any of your readers also think it resembles a coffee table book…I’m here to dispel that myth! It might be the most digestible and enriching story that we own, and we all agree we want to never not be reading it (unless it’s to move on to Dangerous Journey, per your Redeemed Reader recommendations for tackling Pilgrim’s Progress in an age-appropriate way).

Lucy’s Tips: Reading in Real Life

We obviously love books at Redeemed Reader, and we love passing along good tips for making reading happen in the midst of busy family life. Do you have any favorite tips or routines that work for your family when it comes to finding and reading good books? How do you juggle reading as a family (like listening to an audiobook)? What books have worked well for reading together?

I distinctly remember burning out on reading during childhood as academic reading requirements and pressure crowded out time to read for fun (Red Badge of Courage was probably my last straw…or might have been Grapes of Wrath…still not a fan). Partly driven by that, we intentionally do not use our reading time on teaching John to read. Instead, we read to nurture a love of good stories, good ideas, and a healthy imagination. Rich language and themes, inspiring and engaging plots, ones that expand the heart and mind – these are what we look for, and we are much quicker to pick up a book with that motive than I think we would be if I thought of reading as literacy homework.

Amen! In fact, I’ve resisted ever assigning either of those two books in my various English classes. I think most middle and high school students just don’t know how to appreciate them yet.

The more books we have stacked on our kitchen island where we often eat, the more we read, because I pick them up during meals or after-school snacks (the benefits of the reading time outweigh my strong aversion to counter clutter). Convenient access to reading material makes all the difference in my house—those books don’t transport themselves!

I already mentioned some chapter books we’ve loved recently. Some of our favorite read-aloud picture books from the past year that stir the soul are Bartali’s Bicycle and The Man Who Walked Between the Towers (beautiful stories that also provide an opportunity to introduce heroism, WWII, and 9/11); The Clown of God and You Are Special (recognizing God’s love for us); Anatole and Tops & Bottoms (the value of hard work and ingenuity); The Empty Pot (such a great book about honesty!); The Rabbit Listened (empathy); and stories from The Children’s Book of Virtues (a smorgasbord). And, of course, we read plenty that are just silly, and plenty of those all-the-facts-about-everything compendiums which are not my cup of tea but I oblige (Oh wow. The largest rabbit in the world weighs 50 pounds…).

I tried audiobooks for about half a week for myself, but it just didn’t click. However, in the past year for John, we have started listening to books on a mini Yoto player. Yoto cards aren’t cheap and not all the content available in the Yoto store is good content, but they offer lots of classics with top-notch casts and they are screen free, aside from a 1-inch pixelated image that changes with the chapters. Some of our favorite cards are Peter Pan, Robin Hood, Charlotte’s Web, and Treasure Island. John listens to them over and over.

You’ve listed many our team’s favorite books as well! Megan and I remember hearing our favorite children’s literature professor at Covenant College read our class The Clown of God by dePaola.

Lucy’s Business Adventure: Storyglory Kids

You started up a book-related business a couple of years ago that is such a great idea. Will you tell our readers a little bit about Storyglory Kids: what it is, how you came to start it, and what you’d like to accomplish in the future?

Storyglory Kids provides in-person and digital book fairs for schools throughout the U.S. Its mission is to help kids fall in love not just with good books but also with good ideas. How it started…well, while libraries were closed during Covid, my neighbor let John borrow stacks of books from her grown sons’ childhood bookshelves. We loved having a “personal librarian” friend curate great books for us – without due dates, late fees, or a trip to the library. I decided to pay it forward and pulled some picture books from John’s shelves, grouped them by virtue (e.g., courage), and created a little lending library via snail mail for a few friends – kind of a Netflix 1.0 for books.

This first “pilot” of a business (called “Lucy’s Library” by the friends, one of whom became Storyglory’s cofounder) led to a second paid pilot and then a request from a customer to help with a school book fair. I LOVED Scholastic book fairs as a kid and, just out of nostalgia, researched what Scholastic was up to. I soon realized that they are not what they used to be, though they are still the dominant player in the industry. I offered to help John’s classical Christian school create their own book fair, and Storyglory Kids book fairs were born. The fairs have changed a lot since that first one, but I’m as committed as ever to helping schools ignite young minds, nurture hearts, and strengthen family bonds through the power of wholesome, great books (so many of which I find through Storyglory’s partnership with Redeemed Reader!). 

My most immediate aspiration is to bring my waitlist of schools down to zero and serve many more families. I have not had sufficient capacity to meet demand up to this point, but that is about to change! 

What were some of the biggest learning curves in starting a business like this?

I had no idea how much physical space it would require! Soon after starting the business, our apartment became overrun with book boxes. My family then bought a house in New Jersey after almost ten years in the city and moved right before we practically would have been sleeping on books had we stayed in our little Upper West Side apartment. The move was planned before Storyglory’s space constraints were evident, and at a time during the pandemic when moving out of the city to the suburbs was not easy or quick. So being able to move into a house right when I needed it has seemed providential. All of a sudden I had a basement for books! A driveway! And a post office that has parking spots!! (I had previously been using my stroller with the seat removed to carry shipments to my NYC post office.) 

The biggest learning in all of that – aside from learning that I needed more space and more muscle – is that (a) you don’t know what you don’t know, and (b) the Lord does. For starting a business in general, I believe in building a “minimum viable product” (or “MVP”) that enables you to pivot your product or service nimbly as you begin to better understand the needs of your industry and target market and where you fit. The alternative – thinking that you know exactly what the market needs right from the start and building a “permanent” version of that product before you test your hypothesis – rarely works. Which is pretty biblical…because who really knows “what tomorrow will bring” (James 4). So, I think I’ve been learning to “MVP” things and to trust the Lord.

We’ve enjoyed both helping you curate behind the scenes and watching your business grow! (And Megan shares your “space” concerns as she’s watched her basement fill up in order to stock orders for Something Better Coming.)

Recently, you started a new partnership with Westminster Books. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What makes this new partnership exciting for the future of StoryGlory?

This is just a wonderful Kingdom friendship that the Lord provided. Westminster Bookstore is a nonprofit ministry of Westminster Theological Seminary. I was able to connect with its founder through a Storyglory book fair, and we quickly realized the synergies and values alignment between our organizations. They have come alongside Storyglory to take on sourcing and distribution aspects of my business that have outgrown my basement and schedule.

Westminster Bookstore is the best in their field, in my opinion, and they have deep experience bringing high-quality pop-up bookstores to conferences and events in addition to running an online store. I’m very grateful to be able to shift a lot of my operations to them as my distribution partner, and to increase awareness at my schools of the year-long resource that is Westminster Bookstore (shop their new kids’ division at westminsterkids.com! And watch this quick clip to learn more about the heart of this special store in general). What I’m most grateful for with Westminster is just the opportunity to co-labor with their wonderful team.

You all at Redeemed Reader have been just as critical a resource for Storyglory since the beginning, as well as an encouragement and teacher to me, personally. My customers see you listed as my curation partner, and they get Redeemed Reader “caution” notes and links to Redeemed Reader reviews on many of the books that I sell online. Some of the greatest value that Storyglory brings to schools, in my opinion, is its partnerships with Westminster and Redeemed Reader both.

We’re also excited to be part of this three-legged stool (readers, you will hear more about how this benefits you soon!). And, there are some really fun connections on a personal level that echo your comments about God’s marvelous providence at work.

If any of our readers are in a school that would like more information about StoryGlory, what is the best way to contact you?

Email lucy@storyglorykids.com. I’d love to hear from you! You can also learn more at www.storyglorykids.com.

Last Words from Lucy

Any last words of encouragement for your fellow moms of busy school-age kids as we seek to disciple our kids? Do you have a favorite Christian/biblical resource you use as a family?

Our current rotation of Bibles in our house includes The Biggest Story Bible Storybook, The Action Bible (graphic novel format), The Jesus Storybook Bible, The Rhyme Bible Storybook, and sometimes the “grownup” ESV Archaeology Bible from Crossway, which is a really cool edition for curious kids to explore. I recommend all of these! We pick up whichever is on top of the stack on a given day. We also sometimes read devotionals from books like Louie Giglio’s Indescribable or Marty Machowski’s The Ology. One element of our family rhythms that we, from the start, decided would be non-negotiable is reading the Bible together every night, and once you decide it’s non-negotiable, it really isn’t hard to implement. At bedtime we read at least one picture book or chapter, along with at least one Bible passage or devotional. We will scratch baths from our nighttime routine in a pinch, cleaning up, etc.—but we never skip this reading, and it has been so special to see its fruits.

That’s such great advice, Lucy! After all, the Bible is the only required book for us as Christians. And thank you so much for taking the time to “chat” with us today.

Readers, we’re thrilled to be partnering with both Storyglory Kids and with Westminster Books. We’ll be sharing more about Westminster soon.

You can read the rest of our Back Porch Book Chats here (our guests have been business owners like Lucy, bookstore owners, teachers, and more).

Lucy Gundersen is the cofounder of Storyglory Kids, which delivers stories of truth, goodness, and beauty into the lives of children through curated book fairs and curriculum procurement services for schools throughout the U.S. She earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BSBA from UNC-Chapel Hill, where she was a Morehead-Cain Scholar. Prior to becoming a mom, she worked for McKinsey & Company and was Partner of Operations at Praxis, an accelerator supporting Christian entrepreneurs. Lucy began to explore the nuances of education and the power of stories through her volunteer work at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, where she helped build and run a youth program for six years. A transplant originally from the South, she now lives with her husband and son in New Jersey where she is trying to train a puppy at the same time she endeavors to train up little minds with good books.