Building a community of literacy

Sleepy Dog Books, a Mt. Pleasant, MI, independent bookstore owned by CMU alumni Jenny and Riley Justis, has been selected as a recipient of a $20,000 grant courtesy of American Express and Main Street America.

The grant will provide the bookstore with funding to expand operations and amplify the impact of the Justis’ Sleepy Dog Books Foundation, a nonprofit with a mission to get books into children’s hands across the Mid-Michigan region.

“We were shocked,” said Jenny Justis, co-owner of Sleepy Dog Books and co-executive director of the Sleepy Dog Books Foundation. “To win this out of all of the businesses in the U.S. is pretty incredible.”

Only 505 businesses nationwide were selected to receive the grant, with just 6 in Michigan earning the distinction.

Jenny and her husband, Riley, are both 2007 graduates of the College of Education and Human Services (CEHS), where they earned bachelor’s degrees to become schoolteachers. Riley later earned a master’s degree in education administration via CMU Global Campus in 2011 and became a superintendent. In 2020, he earned a Ph.D. in educational leadership from CEHS. Together, Riley and Jenny worked in education for over two decades before opening Sleepy Dog Books in downtown Mt. Pleasant in 2022.

“I stepped out of the classroom when our kids were little and stayed home with them,” Jenny said. “I always planned to go back to teaching, but then COVID happened. We kind of always had a bookstore in the back of our minds, so we just decided now's the time. I'm not committed to a school or anything, so we took the leap and opened the store.”

The Sleepy Dog Books Foundation began in 2024, after Riley and Jenny saw a deep, urgent need for quality literary resources for kids throughout the area.

Since its inception, the foundation has given away over 30,000 books, impacting over 21,000 families in the Mid-Michigan region.

"Literacy is a community resource and a driver of economic growth and prosperity. By focusing on developing early access to high-quality books, we can collectively impact the individual and collective future for a community, a region, and our state as a whole,” Riley said. “By empowering our youngest readers and fostering passion for books early, we develop lifelong learners, critical thinkers, and open the world to each child--one story at a time." 

For the Justis family, success is measured by more than sales or accolades. It is found in the excitement of a child receiving a new book, the curiosity sparked by a story, and the lifelong love of learning that follows. Thanks to this national recognition, that impact is set to grow even further throughout Mid-Michigan.