Dickens Village at Moons Rare Books

Dickens Village is a unique experience that I absolutely loved! It is completely free and goes on all through December. It is found at Moon’s Rare Books, which is located in the Riverwoods Shopping Center in Provo, Utah. Moon’s Rare Books is an antique shop, book shop, and paintings shop. The store is near the main entrance to the shopping center and next to the AMC Classic movie theater. Parking is super limited at the Riverwoods, so plan accordingly.

There is one entrance to the shop, and when you first walk in, you will be surprised by all of the paintings and antiques that greet you. There is a corner of small toys and nativity sets that are fun to look at, but you are not at Dickens Village yet. Continue all the way through the others side of the store, and you will see a huge Christmas Tree. This marks the entrance to Dickens Village. It is on the left side and it almost looks like an entirely new store! A huge sleigh sits in the middle of the main room. Father Christmas sits there is you happen to see him around 5pm. On the left, is a huge old fashioned indoor village. Several shops and rooms are decorated and open for people to walk through. There is a print shop where several copies of Charles Dicken’s books actually are printed out and currently being printed for purchase. This room is rather small, the tour guides might let you in if it isn’t very crowded when you get there.

The next room is a bedroom with a bunch of antique items that actually belonged to Charles Dicken’s such as his journal, quilts, and some of the toys he had. The tour guides answer any questions you may have about Charles Dickens’ life and the things that he did. There is another room behind this room, where the bible was printed as well as several other scriptural sources. This room was very crowded when I went, so I didn’t get to see a lot of it, but it was pretty big from what I saw. The last room, is a giant living room displaying more antique items as well as a fireplace. Tour guides are all dressed in older style clothing with black aprons on to help them stand apart.

One of my favorite things about the Dickens Village was the super ancient typewriter looking thing they had there. It is very old. It is gold with a lot of little buttons. It seems that it was used for money purposes and accounting. It sits by the entrance of the village. I also really enjoyed seeing the Dickens characters all lined up at the back door. There was also a movie playing in the corner for little kids to watch as they waited for Father Christmas. It is interesting to learn about the life of Charles Dickens and see things as they were from his perspective. This event is for everyone and is super fun!