About

Brand new bookstore café in Milwaukee
Small press books and graphic novels
Open Sun-Wed 11-5 Thy-Sat 11-7

Lion's Tooth is a new bookstore café in the beautiful Bay View neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Here's a first look at our shop from Milwaukee Record.

Since January 2020 we've been running a subscription program that includes new releases and work by featured artists. This other great article has more information about this.

Our goal is to provide Milwaukee with a cultural hub and gathering place for both children and adults. Join our community by subscribing to our monthly care packages and shopping in our online store. Follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

Shelly McClone-Carriere is one of the founders of the Riverwest Co-Op Grocery & Café. She was a board member from 2002-2012, manager from 2001-2018 and bookkeeper since 2003. More recently she was School Café coordinator at Highland Community School, working with middle schoolers to develop skills that include planning the menu, budgeting and preparing meals for students, teachers and family members. Shelly's passion for books and community is at the heart of what Lion's Tooth stands for.

Cris Siqueira has owned a bookstore specialized in graphic novels in her native city of São Paulo (Brazil), where she also covered comics as a journalist and continues to translate graphic novels to Portuguese. In 1997 Cris interviewed over 20 American cartoonists and published an award-winning compilation that introduced their work to Brazilian readers. For the last few years she has been revisiting her favorite artists – you can read these interviews here. Now an American citizen with deep Wisconsin roots, Cris has earned Master's Degrees in Film and History from UW-Milwaukee.

The name Lion's Tooth is a reference to dandelions, those stubborn masters of survival (from the French dent-de-lion). We want the books and art we love to thrive and multiply like they do. The dandelion regenerates even when you cut off the yellow flower, just like bookstores, which have survived the big-box "retail apocalypse", the wreath of Beelzebezos, and now a global pandemic, and continue to spread love across the land.