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Tyrannosaurus Tot owners Jalesa and John Dodson

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The storefront takes over the first floor — 1,500 square feet — of 113 W. Brookland Park Blvd.

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Just a few months ago, Jalesa Dodson wasn’t looking to expand her business at all — not a year and a half after opening her bookstore in Bowling Green, and certainly not into a space more than three times the size and almost an hour away. But when Brookland Park shop owners told her Richmond needed a store like hers, she listened. 

Jalesa and her husband, John, opened the original location of Tyrannosaurus Tot in February 2025. The 400-square-foot shop in Caroline County is part bookstore, part creative space for kids and teens; this month, the duo introduced a second outpost in North Side Richmond. 

“The goal is to encourage reading by getting the story into your hands via hands-on creativity,” Jalesa says. “I find that kids listen to stories better — they pay attention and comprehend more — when they’re doing something with their hands, and so combining that love of creativity and reading together is our reason for being.” 

The store was an evolution of Jalesa’s original business: creating and selling subscription boxes that pair children’s books with themed craft activities. After about two years of online sales and farmers market appearances, the Dodsons tested the waters by opening their first brick-and-mortar Tyrannosaurus Tot store. 

“The long-term goal was always a children’s bookstore, but then it developed into an art studio, too,” Jalesa says. “There wasn’t really anything like that in the Bowling Green area.” 

A move to Richmond in September 2025 brought the couple and their three children to Brookland Park and its rapidly growing strip of businesses, where 113 W. Brookland Park Blvd. sat unfilled. 

“[We were told] the block itself could really use a space for the kids and the families to be able to pop up and hang out,” John says, “because the families here are growing along with North Side as a whole, and so that led to finding the space.” 

Recent years have brought a host of change to North Side and its main artery of Brookland Park Boulevard, including new restaurants and another bookshop, I Love You So Much Books, a few doors down from Tyrannosaurus Tot’s space.

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Bookshelves and other furniture in the store were fabricated locally.

The building, adjacent to the 1925 Brookland Theatre, was formerly home to the headquarters of community nonprofit Embrace Richmond and a Christian ministry, though the space was unoccupied in recent years. In 2023, a cohort of investors bought the building, initially hoping to convert the mixed-use structure to an art gallery with apartment units on the floor above. The Dodsons settled on their location after exploring a few empty retail spaces on the strip. 

The buildout for the expanded space — a total of 1,500 square feet, more than 1,000 square feet larger than the Bowling Green location — includes a wall of books curated regularly for infants, kids and young adults; a sensory play area and crafting station complete with a sand table, a projector and a wash sink; and additional seating for reading events, after-school programs and other gatherings. Local fabricators Pulp Woodworking constructed the checkout counter, bookshelves and other furniture in the shop. 

“We’re going to be able to create and be that third space that we think is really important; we want to provide birthday parties, events like moms’ events, dads’ events, night outs like that,” Jalesa says. “Those are things that we don’t offer in Bowling Green, just because of the space; it does limit our offerings.” 

The Dodsons hope their location can attract students from nearby schools, including Barack Obama Elementary School and Richmond Community High School, and become a learning destination for young adults.  

“We hope that when a kid’s walking back from Barack Obama Elementary, they’ll just be like, ‘I’m just going to walk in and go say hi to Ms. Jalesa and Mr. John and come in and grab a book off the shelf,’” John says. “That’s very much the ideal version of this store, is that kids have a space where they can also feel very welcome, because really, for kids on the block, there’s not a lot of spaces where they can just come and sit without pressure. That type of atmosphere is very much how we want to collaborate with the community.” 

“Our thing is, let them read, let them play and let them be little,” Jalesa adds. “We don’t want them to grow up too fast; we want them to really just be kids and enjoy it. There’s no age requirement on books — they’re for everyone.”