After deciding to “be the change we want to see” less than a year ago, Wednesbury’s Blue Sheep Books has already become a firm favourite of the local community, with a wonderfully woolly mascot on hand to delight and encourage budding book-lovers.

Enthusiastic supporters of local schools, Blue Sheep Books is driven by a belief in the magic of books – something we couldn’t agree with more. Read on to find out more, and for some baa-rilliant (sorry-not-sorry) book recommendations from Sorina and John.

Describe your shop in three words.

Small, Fun, Blue!

When was your bookshop born? Tell us about your journey and the changes you’ve seen (and made) along the way.

Born: October 2021. We moved to Wednesbury in 2018 and really liked the town, particularly the old town centre. However, like many town centres it is lacking in ‘proper’ shops and has lots of charity shops, betting agents and barbers. Now, there’s nothing wrong with those but we thought Wednesbury could be so much more if it had more independent shops present. Roll on a year and COVID lockdown and, well, we decided that we should be the change we want to see and would open Blue Sheep Books. 

Our journey: we are still really new (less than a year old) but we are learning A LOT! We have made several incremental changes as we’ve gone on, with the biggest being to stock a large range of West Bromwich Albion Football Club Books! We had no idea that they’d be so popular or that the authors would be so supportive of our shop. 

We’ve also grown our selection of pre-loved books, added jigsaws, games, a small amount of stationery and comics to our selection as customers have asked for things. 

What’s important in a great bookshop?

Ooh that’s a tricky one. We’d naturally say books! But that’s not really an answer… For us a great bookshop is more than a retail business, it’s a community-driven space which serves its customers and reflects their reading habits, helps locals get into reading and supports schools. 

What sets you apart and makes you special? 

Supernova! Yep, we have a bookshop mascot, in our resident Blue Super Sheep. She is called Supernova and her super power is helping young readers to improve their reading. Every time one of her #BookFlock opens a book she is present and helps them concentrate. (This is a character we invented and it goes down really well with our younger readers.)

What’s your all-time favourite…

- picture book recommendation?

Kaleidoscope of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Life by Greer Stothers

- children’s fiction recommendation?

Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston

- YA recommendation? 

Gearbreakers by Hana Zoe Mikuta

Which books have you been recommending recently? 

Way of the Argosi and Fall of the Argosi by Sebastian de Castell; Run, Rose, Run by J. Patterson & Dolly Parton; Pandora by Susan Stokes-Chapman.

What’s your favourite area of your bookshop?

All of it, as it's so small.

What are you most proud of? 

We are very proud of the progress we see in our shop. Every time we walk past it we can't really believe it's ours!

Who would you invite to your dream literary party? 

Bram Stoker, Lee Child, J. K. Rowling and Mary Shelley

Tell us a secret about books

The secret about books is that they are magic! Open a book and you can time travel to a bygone age, experience the world through someone else's eyes, enter lands and worlds and universes alien, unique and completely removed from our own. Books are portals to learning, to remembering, to fun, to grief and to all the other emotions. 

Just like humans, they can confuse us, amuse us, educate us and keep us company. All that and more is contained in these things we call books - a collection of words, printed on paper sandwiched between covers and just waiting for a reader to open them and release the magic!

Discover more about Blue Sheep Books:

Website: www.bluesheepbooks.com

Online shop: uk.bookshop.org/shop/bluesheepbooks

Twitter: @SheepBooks

Facebook: @bluesheepbooks

Discover more awesome independent bookshops in our regular Bookshop of the Month series.