• Bank Street Bookstore

  Broadway and 112th St.; 212-678-1654

  With more than 60,000 titles in its window-lit, two-floor space—66 shelves of fiction, 42 of picture books, and a center table loaded with prizewinners and staff picks—the Bank Street Bookstore is the mother lode for kids’ lit, with the largest variety, the best selection, and the most unusual and provocative books for young readers and the adults around them. Staffers are “voracious, passionate readers” who are paid to read weekly, says manager, buyer, and onetime preschool teacher Beth Puffer. Their breadth of knowledge puts chain stores to sorry shame, as does a well-edited selection of educational toys and games. Regular events include an ongoing reading series headlined by Cynthia Nixon and superstar kids’ author Jon Scieszka. Books come in seventeen languages, including Urdu, Bengali, and Vietnamese. In the market for Winnie-the-Pooh? Find it here three ways: in English, Latin, and Yiddish. Or snap up the hotly awaited The Talented Clementine, hitting the shelves on April 1.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine