Philly’s tiniest used bookshop opens in the back of a children’s dress shop on Passyunk Avenue

Little Yenta has to be the tiniest used bookshop in Philly. And it’s certainly the only one located in the back of a 40-year-old children’s dressmaking studio.

Ariel and Simon Censor, partners in life and now books, are set to open Little Yenta Books, their self-described “micro-bookstore,” on East Passyunk Avenue in South Philadelphia Saturday.

Situated, speakeasy-style, in a postage-stamp-sized loft above the Painted Lady children’s boutique, the 150-square-foot shop is near to bursting with over 1,500 titles, including literary fiction, science fiction, poetry, history, graphic novels, plays, and first-edition classics.

“We can’t be everything to everyone,” said Ariel Censor, 27, preparing the spine-packed space with her husband on a recent afternoon. “But we want to be something to most people.”

The shop is a passion project.

The Haverford College graduates have long been aficionados of used bookshops – believers in the magic of unexpectedly stumbling upon a literary treasure in a sea of cast-off paperbacks. Their South Philly rowhouse could double as a secondhand store itself, the couple jokes.

“You really couldn’t use the living room anymore,” laughed Censor. “It was all books.”

Last year, they decided to host pop-up used book sales around the neighborhood, including at the popular Cartesian Brewery. It was a hit.

“We got lots of people coming and saying that they wished there was a permanent used bookstore around here,” said Ariel Censor, who works as an associate communications director at the Penn Center for Impact Philanthropy.

Molly’s Books & Records on Ninth Street in the Italian Market has long been an iconic South Philly used book spot. A Novel Idea, a popular, independent bookshop, which opened on East Passyunk Avenue in 2018, mostly deals in new books. The couple believed South Philly could handle another used book destination. Selling nearly 100 books at the brewery event, the couple decided to make their dream a reality.

Searching for a brick and mortar space they could afford — and that boasted a little South Philly charm — they found it in the back of Painted Lady. It’s in a small storefront at 1910 East Passyunk, where dressmaker Angela D’Alonzo has made custom baby outfits for decades.

It’s a case of old South Philly meeting new South Philly. For $400 a month, she offered the couple a little loft area storage space five steps above her shop, with no heat or hot water. Warmth creeps up from the basement, explained Simon Censor, who works for a real estate firm. And hot water is not a must for book buying, they added.

“Your hands are just a little cold, and that’s okay,” Ariel said.

Ariel and Simon Censor have transformed the tiny space into a literary thicket, with shelves and stacks of titles from their home collections, and ones they’ve purchased from estate sales and sellers. Rare early editions and classics by Truman Capote, James Baldwin, E.L. Doctorow, Octavia Butler, and Willa Cather. Hard-to-find paperback editions of George Orwell, Albert Camus, Italian novelist Elena Ferrante, and cult favorite Charles Bukowski.

“I always want to fit more books in here,” said Ariel Censor.

On a bulletin board hang keepsakes the couple have discovered in the books, including notes, prayer cards, letters, poems, baseball cards, a high school class schedule from the 1990s, and a vintage recipe for triple chocolate cake.

“I actually want to make that someday,” said Ariel Censor.

Opened Thursdays and Fridays from 4:30-7 p.m., and weekends from 12-6 p.m., the spirit of the shop is found in its name, the couple said. In American Yiddish parlance, Yenta can mean matchmaker. For Ariel and Simon Censor, that means that special feeling of playing matchmaker between a reader and a book.

“Just coming in and stumbling upon a book that you will love,” said Ariel Censor.