For book lovers in the Valley, a weekend road trip just got a lot more rewarding. Sixteen independent booksellers have joined forces for the second annual Pioneer Valley Bookstore Crawl, a season-long scavenger hunt that turns local shopping into a community-wide adventure.

Driven by a customized passport system, the expanded event that’s already underway and runs through August has more than doubled its roster from last year, offering prizes, community connections and a structured map to help readers discover hidden literary gems right in their own backyard.

The independent shops anchoring this year’s crawl span across the region and include: High Five Books and Bookends in Florence; Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley; Amherst Books and The Carle Museum Bookshop in Amherst; Booklink Booksellers, Broadside Bookshop, and Interlink Showroom in Northampton; Book Moon Books and Comics N’More in Easthampton; Federal Street Books and Roundabout Books in Greenfield; A New Chapter in West Springfield; Olive Tree Books-n-Voices and Rumspringa Books in Springfield; and Unnameable Books in Turners Falls.

The event organizers, Kinsey Foreman, manager of High Five Books in Florence, and Laure Colodner, the children’s department coordinator at Odyssey Books in South Hadley, said they received numerous requests from participants last year to include more bookstores that they love.

“We got a lot of people saying ‘Oh, why isn’t this bookstore involved?’” Foreman said. “This year, we wanted to expand it and add more bookstores, but still make it possible for people to do it however works best for them. That’s why we have the two different prize tiers this year, going to four or more [bookstores] or 10 or more.”

One of the additions to the list this year is Roundabout Books in Greenfield. Within the walls of its 1900s factory building, the store contains a collection of more than 60,000 new and used books, with history, fiction and poetry being the most popular genres.

“If they come here and they meet us, they’re gonna love the place,” said owner Raymond Neal.

He hopes that Roundabout’s involvement in the crawl will help by “just getting people in the door who might not want to venture, you know, who might not think to venture up to Greenfield,” he said.

“Sometimes when people discover us, they’re like ‘I know all the bookstores.’ They almost seem offended that they didn’t already know us,” Neal said. “People will do that [Bookstore Crawl] even without a passport. Give them encouragement and they really will do it.”

The idea for the crawl came about after Foreman and Colodner attended a panel at a bookselling conference that focused on crawls.

“We just kept saying to each other ‘This should exist in the Valley, it’s so perfect for so many great indie bookstores out here,’” Foreman explained.

Foreman and Colodner decided that summer was the perfect time for the crawl since business can be slower for bookstores and people may have more free time on their hands.

“We have people coming in every day, picking up their passport,” Colodner said. “I hope that it’ll last the rest of the summer.”

While the crawl acts as a fun weekend or summer-long activity, Foreman explained that she hopes it will motivate customers to shop locally instead of at big chain stores or online.

Beyond driving foot traffic, the crawl has fostered meaningful collaboration among the local booksellers.

“Now I know places to point people when someone comes in looking for something and we might not have it in stock, like ‘oh, you should go check out this bookstore.’” Foreman said.

At Odyssey Books, sci-fi and fantasy are the genres that get the most attention. They also see historical fiction and mystery getting love.

“In the summer, people are looking for lighter reads, so romance, too, gets a little boost,” Colodner said.

Book Moon Books in Easthampton has been a part of the crawl for both its years of run. Assistant manager Andy McAlpine said that when people come in to get their bookstore crawl passport stamped, they’re always very excited.

“They’re kind of automatically in a good mood, and it’s just kind of a net positive for us,” said McAlpine.

In 2019, longtime booksellers and authors Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant bought a local used bookstore, transforming it into Book Moon Books — a shop offering both new and used titles.

The crawl has served as a tool to bring in customers who wouldn’t have normally stopped in the stores. Whether it is because they hadn’t heard of a shop or because it differs from their genre preference, it helps expand local shops’ audiences.

“Some one [recently] came in doing the bookstore crawl, and they were like, ‘Oh, I’ve driven past your store so many times but I never knew really what it was and I hadn’t stopped before,’” Foreman said. “Since High Five is mostly a kids’ bookstore, it’s not a place that everyone’s been before … we have a lot of families that come in, but it’s fun to see kind of a different crowd, like younger people without kids, older people who might have grandkids, but haven’t thought to stop in yet.”

At High Five Books, books that cater to ages 8 to 12 are the most popular. Additionally, Foreman said that graphic novels get a lot of attention and seem to help kids develop a stronger love of reading through the combination of words and images.

“Another really big category for us right now is board books, which is really sweet, because a lot of people are helping build the libraries of the little ones in their lives and people having new babies,” she added.

The Pioneer Valley Bookstore Crawl continues until Monday, Aug. 31.

“Last year we had, I think, the number was exactly 333 completed passports turned in, so it would be really cool if we got even more this year,” Foreman said.

As part of the crawl, 16 participants who visit four or more bookstores will be selected to win a $25 gift card to one of the included bookstores, and one participant who visits 10 or more will win $800 in bookstore gift cards.

For more information about the crawl or to download a passport, visit bit.ly/4w8CGD2.