ELK GROVE, Calif. — Mychal Threets, a supervising librarian at Solano County Library with a large following on social media, visited Elk Grove’s only bookstore Saturday to help boost visibility and its new nonprofit outing, according to an owner.
A Seat at the Table Books (ASATT), located at 9257 Laguna Springs Drive #130, recently launched a community initiative as part of The Giving Back Fund, which facilitates philanthropy and helps high-profile individuals achieve their humanitarian mission, according to its website.
Threets’ content generally focuses on sharing library resources and telling heartwarming stories of interactions he sees at the library on a daily basis, including children helping each other read or a child being excited over a book they are checking out. His username on both apps is @mychal3ts.
He has 427,000 followers on Instagram and 261,100 followers on TikTok. He posted a TikTok Monday about an experience he had talking with attendees during his visit at ASATT.
“One individual came up to me and handed me this letter,” said Threets in the post.
Threets proceeded to read the letter in which someone thanks him for being an “outstanding influence” in their journey to attempting to read more paragraphs and pages as it does not come easily to them.
“I’m going to have a fantastic, wonderful, spectacular life because of this beautiful letter,” he said.
Emily Autenrieth, ASATT owner, said some followers find his content very validating, affirming and educational. Autenrieth, who prefers the gender-neutral pronouns “ey,” “em” and “eirs” as opposed to “she,” her” and “hers,” said eir bookstore may be small, but its inventory is very carefully curated by booksellers who want everyone to feel safe, feel welcome and see themselves on shelves.
“We have a lot of books about the history of Palestine and its people in store right now,” Autenrieth said. “At least a dozen customers have come up to the register to tell us just how much that means to them.”
Threets is based out of Solano County and drove to Sacramento County to attend the event.
“Our overwhelming feeling was of thankfulness for Mychal taking the time to drive an hour each way and meet community members… and [to] our community for showing up and telling Mychal how much his videos and libraries in general mean to them,” Autenrieth said.
Autenrieth said ASATT is almost at risk of closing and the idea of Threets’ visit came about during efforts to #saveASATT on Instagram and TikTok in November. The campaign was launched by Ashley Newell, a Sacramento-based influencer who has over 20,000 followers on both Instagram and TikTok.
Newell coordinated an influencer event with ASATT in December and reached out to Threets, but he was unavailable the day of the event, ey said.
Threets instead offered to appear at his own meet and greet later on.
“It's so important that we stay open to keep serving our community and we're facing the risk of closing if the current level of support in response to #saveASATT is not sustained,” ey said.
