This Vertical Bookshelf Is the Best Way to Store a Ton of Kids’ Chapter Books

Is your kid’s room small on space but big on books? I hear you! My 9-year-old is a voracious reader, and she has amassed quite the book collection. (Her favorite series right now are The Bookwanderers, The Mysterious Benedict Society, and The Vanderbeekers.) But in the current setup, her room doesn’t have wall space for a wide bookshelf. The solution? We went vertical with the DWR Story Bookcase.

I’d had my eye on DWR’s Story Bookcase for years and was fortunate to find two of them on Craigslist. When I first purchased the bookcases, I kept one in the kitchen to hold cookbooks; now they’re both in my daughter’s room.

• It comes in great colors. In addition to black (Coal) and white, this heavy, powder-coated steel shelf comes in colors like Saffron (a mustardy yellow), Sesame (a chic beige), and Neptune (a deep blue).
• The shelves are accessible. Because it’s a freestanding vertical bookshelf (versus a wall-mounted one), the shelves can be rotated — so you can face them all out, or alternate one facing out, one facing side — which makes it easy for my daughter to reach all her books.
• It’s versatile. Eventually we may rearrange my daughter’s room and find space for a traditional bookshelf, at which point I know I can easily move the Story bookcases to another part of the house.

The DWR Story Bookcase is extremely sturdy. Neither the standard 5-foot height and the taller 6-foot height bookcase is at all wobbly or tippy, but they do come with wall-anchoring hardware and a safety strap for extra assurance. Best of all, it’s compact, but fits a lot (like, a lot) of books. My daughter packs 80+ chapter books on the standard-sized one (more on the tall version!), but it only takes up 15 inches of floor space!

Buy: DWR Story Bookcase, starting at $356 at Design Within Reach

This article has been updated from its original publication in March 2023.