Amy Sewell is alone in the Albright College bookstore, save for her “desk friends.” On her computer terminal there are dinosaurs, cakes, a little sloth eraser and a rock that says “Inspire.” There are toys that she finds in Kinder chocolate eggs and gifts from her 11-year-old daughter.

“I just think they’re interesting,” Sewell said about dinosaurs. “I like random facts.”

If she likes random facts, then Sewell, who has been the manager of the Albright College bookstore since November 2019, is living the dream. She’s responsible for the mountains of textbooks that come into the bookstore in the weeks preceding each semester, and making sure they get to the right students on time. After months of quiet due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sewell recently got to have a conversation with a student about the comic books on the bookstore shelves.

“Just like regular normal people,” she said. “Just a normal conversation, and I think sometimes it’s a lost art.”

You’re more likely to see Sewell with a comic book than a textbook. One graphic novel called “I Kill Giants,” about a girl whose mother has cancer, hit close to home; Sewell also has a family member with cancer.

“It was amazing,” she said; “you think a comic book and you think it’s just people fighting or villains versus the good guys, and it’s not always that clear-cut when it’s a message that can hit home. It shows you that there are always ways it can touch your heart and help you relate, that someone had to deal with that to be able to write it. It makes you feel like, ‘Okay, you may not be the only person going through something, and that’s okay.’”

Reading “I Kill Giants” reminded Sewell of her mortality.

“It makes you realize there’s an end,” she said, “but it also makes you realize that you can still fight.” 

In an age of screen-based parenting, Sewell has emphasized reading and bedtime stories for her daughter.

“She’s like a little book sponge,” she said.

Sewell’s daughter loves fantasy and comic books, especially “Squirrel Girl.”

Sewell has also been an avid drawer since middle school, specializing in landscapes and animals.

“Depends on what my mood is hitting,” she said. “I’m not as good as drawing people, but I cry.”

Sewell grew up in Abington Township, Montgomery County. Her mother was born in Austria (“Like ‘The Sound of Music,’ she says) and makes a delicious Austrian plum cake every year. Sewell wanted to learn German because her mother and grandmother would speak the language whenever they wanted to keep their conversation a secret. Now that Sewell has picked up some German, she knows when they’re, say, discussing what cake to get for her birthday party. She graduated from college in 1992 with a degree in political science and concentration on psychology. She became a social worker, working with “dependent and delinquent” teenagers in Montgomery County.

“There are a lot of teenagers,” Sewell said, “children out there who sometimes are overlooked in the system, and they have a lot to offer, and they have gifts, and unfortunately they sometimes are in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

She did crafts with the teens and painted their nails, creating a sense of normality. After hearing about their experiences, Sewell became more outgoing.

“I’ve always liked to help or talk to people,” she said. “There’s certain people who I think get in that field who are more about control or yelling or whatever, and that’s just not my deal.”

After a series of retail jobs, in 2014 Sewell started working for Barnes and Noble at Immaculata College in East Whiteland Township, Pa. 

Suddenly, a bell rings. Sewell opens the bookstore backdoor, creating a gust of wind that smells like cardboard. She takes the boxes of books off of the UPS truck and puts them onto a cart.

“Is that it for me?” She asks.

After years of wrangling biology textbooks that can weigh between 5 and 10 pounds each, this is nothing for Sewell. One textbook that sociology Professor Barton Thompson uses in a First Year Seminar, titled “How to Think About Weird Things,” is on her reading list. She just has to get through her box of comics first.