Growing Through Arts® retailer: The Met Opera Shop

Growing Through Arts® is making a grand debut at a new retail spot — The Metropolitan Opera Shop in New York City. Located in the lobby of the most well-known opera house in the country, the Met Opera Shop sells a wide range of CDs, DVDs, books, clothes, jewelry and more.

The Met Opera Shop has recently expanded its children’s book section because, according to Store Buyer George Flanagan, even though adults are buying fewer and fewer hard copies of books, parents are still buying books to read to their children. “You really can’t read a Kindle to your four year old,” he says.

Flanagan says he was impressed by the content and design of the Growing Through Arts® books and toys. “That series has so much element of thought about how it is packaged,” Flanagan says. He says he likes the questions that are incorporated into the books that parents can ask children as they read the book, as well as the music and ballet vocabulary words that are woven into the story.

“Another element I really liked were the plastic tote bags,” Flanagan says, referring to the bags that the books come in. “Definitely it’s just really clever.”

The Met Opera Shop currently has the Nutcracker Ballet Storybook by Aleksandra,® The Peter and the Wolf Symphony by Aleksandra®, and the matching ballet and music Alphabet Sets hanging on hooks next to the kids book table, where they are sure to catch the eye of tourists and grandparents looking for a fun gift.

Flanagan predicts the books will be big sellers because his clientele is interested in products that are educational and unique. “It’s special to have something like this, where no one’s really seen it before,” he says.

And he says the illustrated, sticky letters in the music and ballet Alphabet Sets will sell well because they’re interactive. “For a kid to be able to touch it and put it on the window, it really stays with them more because it’s tangible,” he says.

As a buyer at one of the most prestigious performing arts centers in the world, Flanagan understands how important it is to teach future generations about the arts and foster their interest in the arts when they are young.

“What I’ve found is… young opera fans in their 20s and early 30s were exposed to it when they were a child,” he says. “When you’re exposed to these things as a toddler or a younger child, it really hooks you in.”