‘There’s a huge link between the books and GP practice’

Niamh Cahill speaks to Dr Christina McDonnell about her popular online children’s bookstore and why reading matters

GP Dr Christina McDonnell is the owner of the successful online bookstore Genius Juniors Books. For Dr McDonnell, who is a mother-of-two, the importance of children’s books became apparent in the context of her own family.

“I’ve no interest in adult books for some reason – I don’t know why,” she told the Medical Independent (MI). “I will in my retirement years, I suppose. But, for now, I see the benefit reading has for children. I can see my own daughter and her vocabulary and language skills are off the wall. It’s so important and even from a bonding point of view, to sit with your child and give them that one-on-one time. It creates memories that last for the rest of their lives. There’s so much value in books.”

Dr McDonnell completed her medical degree in Galway before moving to Limerick for her intern year and GP training.

“I never went too far from home. I still work in Limerick and Clare, doing GP work,” she said.

However, in only four years, her “mad notion” to become an independent bookseller has led to an extremely successful online business. Genius Juniors currently supplies thousands of children’s books to schools, corporate bodies, and households, both nationally and internationally.

Since ordering her first box of children’s books – initially a charity idea to raise money for Children’s Health Ireland – demand has grown considerably.

“It was meant to be a two-week initiative, but it blew up very quickly because people online said they wanted more. We ran it like that for two years. Then I had a radio interview with Ryan Tubridy on RTÉ Radio 1 and that really blew things out of the water altogether. He really put us on the map,” she said.

A few years ago, there was another boost when the business became a finalist in the ‘An Post Irish Bookshop of the Year’ awards.

“We operated out of a spare box room in my house and I had people helping to pack orders. But we outgrew that… we had to move to a warehouse and it changed to a fully-fledged business.”

Balancing act

Dr McDonnell is not just a successful business owner. She undertakes GP locum shifts, generally with Centric Health in Ennis and Limerick, and has an interest in aesthetic medicine. She also regularly provides medical services for An Garda Síochána.

As she lives near the local Garda station, Dr McDonnell is available “24/7, more or less, where possible, for various calls to cut down the waiting times”.

She can get there quickly for matters that are highly time dependent, such as taking blood samples in cases of potential drink driving.

Dr McDonnell engages in all the above without childcare, juggling working weeks alongside her husband, a consultant, whose schedule is often unpredictable.

How does she balance all her responsibilities? She laughs before explaining: “I’m a night owl. I can survive on little sleep. My career in medicine has prepared me well.”

“Once [the children] go to bed I get stuck into work straight away. I don’t watch movies or take much chill time. This is my passion and I love it. My life is unpredictable. It’s not the same every day.”

Children’s books are a big part of her family’s life, particularly since her now five-year-old daughter was born. 

“I was always reading as a child, but once I got into the world of medicine I was consumed with that and wasn’t really reading for pleasure. But then my daughter came along and we live and breathe children’s books. I could easily read 40 or 50 picture books with her in a day. We don’t have screens for them, that’s the way we run it. We let them play, run outside or read books.”

Dr McDonnell has plans to one day open a “bricks and mortar” bookstore. However, for the moment, geniusjuniors.ie is thriving.

Genius Juniors

The business offers a personalised service to customers where they can directly contact Dr Mc Donnell and ask for advice and book recommendations.

Many hours and nights are spent carefully selecting and sourcing each book to ensure it fits with the business “ethos”, according to Dr McDonnell.

The ethos is not only to provide enjoyable and entertaining books for children, but to help equip them with the tools needed to navigate and understand the world.

The store offers more than 3,000 children’s titles, each divided into different categories. These can be anything from seasonal and educational books to those on potty training, bereavement, and mental health.

“On the website we have an expert panel and I have certain people that I connect with through social media. A lot of them are speech and language therapists and teachers and I have all of their recommendations in categories,” Dr McDonnell added.

“We stock the largest selection of children’s books in the country. We’re solely children’s books.”

What are the best-selling books? Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site by Sherri Duskey Rinker is a “massive seller”, she said. The Invisible String by Patrice Karst is very popular, as is Wonderfully Wired Brains by Louise Gooding, a book about neurodiversity.

She pointed out that books in the Irish language also sell well.

Charity

Dr McDonnell still manages to incorporate charity work into her business. When customers are at the checkout, they can make a donation that goes directly to children’s hospitals.

“Or there is a donate-a-book option too where they can donate €10 and we’ll give them a certificate,” she outlined.

“A lot of people use them as gifts to give people at Christmas, or teacher gifts. A book will be donated in your name and we will use that to buy a book to distribute to children’s hospitals around the country. We’ve distributed thousands of books in this way.”

A few years ago, a fundraising initiative by entertainer Mr Kieran Corrigan provided the store with €10,000 to buy children’s book for children’s hospitals.

Benefits of reading

Dr McDonnell believes that books can be of huge benefit to children in hospital.

“When I was working in [emergency medicine]… it would have been lovely to have a book in your back pocket to pull out for a child to entertain them before you’re going to take their bloods, for example,” she told MI.

Similarly, she feels that her work as a GP relates closely to children’s books. 

“Sometimes it sounds off the wall – that I have a bookshop, as well as being a GP. But I actually think there’s a huge link between the books and GP practice. A lot of the queries that parents come to us with through the website would be queries that people come to the GP about.”

These can range from queries about bed-wetting at night to how to manage anger tantrums.

“I think it’s really added to my ability as a GP to recommend books because children respond to them so well.”

She believes books are transformative and can have a huge role in parenting.

They can also provide comfort, support, information, and understanding, as well as entertainment.

“It doesn’t matter once a child is reading something,” stated Dr McDonnell.

“Even if they look for the same book every night for two years, it doesn’t matter because they still benefit from the repetition and the comfort they’re getting from it.”