Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights - Sue Purkiss

Mr B’s, in case you haven’t heard of it, is a wonderful independent book shop in Bath. I’m about an hour away from Bath, and my nearest bookshop is a small Waterstones - so Mr B’s isn’t exactly my local.

But a couple of weeks ago, I spent a whole afternoon there. The reason? Last Christmas, one of my children gave me a truly magnificent present: it’s called a Reading Spa - in my view, just so much better than the other kind of spa!

What happens is this. You turn up at the shop - which is a characterful series of little rooms, linked by narrow staircases and with a surprise round every corner - and meet your designated ‘bibliophile’. You will already have given a few details about yourself and your reading habits over the phone when you made your appointment. You go upstairs, and sit in comfortable armchairs with tea or coffee and a delicious cake - and then you talk books, for an hour and a half! First you talk in more detail about the kind of thing you like, then your guide - for me, the delightful and very expert Amy - goes off to choose a selection of books for you to choose from - you have £55 to spend.

A corner of the children's department.

There’s so much that’s good about this. It’s a joy just to talk about books with someone else who loves books just as much as I do. And Amy produced a pile of books that I hadn’t come across. She introduced each one, explaining what it was about and why she thought I might like it - in some cases, she’d enlisted the help of colleagues. It was actually very difficult to choose. Eventually I ended up with a pile of ‘definites’ and another of ‘maybes’, and Amy promised to email me a list of the ‘maybes’. 

I left with my books, a bag, a mug, and a voucher towards my next purchase from Mr B’s. And I’ll certainly use it. I think the Reading Spa is an excellent idea, and Mr B truly is an Emporium of Reading Delights. 

And the books I chose? Here they are. 

With many thanks, to Richard (my son), and Amy, from Mr B’s.

Books For Bags: Celebrating Local Bookshops! by Emma Barnes

Recently on ABBA I posted about Book Festivals  - and how they are going from strength to strength.  It's not been so easy for bookshops.  Discounting in supermarkets, the decline of the high street, and the growth of online retailing have all made it much, much harder for bookshops to compete.

Last month, a national celebration of bookshops - Books Are My Bag - brought authors and bookshops together to try and do something about this.  Across the country, there were all kinds of festivities to help make the public more aware of the importance of local bookshops.

Here in Leeds, my fellow children's author Alison Brown (the author/illustrator of picture books Mighty Mo and Eddie and Dog) had the idea we should be part of this, and so on Saturday 11 November I was chuffed to be part of <i>Books for Bags</i> at Radish, the fantastic bookshop close to us in the high street in Chapel Allerton.

Me, Alison and Lisa at Radish

Radish is a great shop and the atmosphere, the selection of books, and the recommendations by knowledgeable staff provide something you cannot find online.

Bookshops are vital - part of the infrastructure of a reading culture.  Bookshop staff read the books they sell, can make recommendations, and know the kind of things their customers enjoy.

Many books have taken off not because of a mass marketing campaign by publishers, but because of grassroots recommendations and a slow spreading of word of mouth...often originating with the independent bookshops. 

We need to support them.  It really is a matter of Use Them - or Lose Them.

I just wish I'd had more time to browse the fantastic children's selection on the day.  Never mind.  The joy of local bookshop is you can pop in any time.



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Emma's new series for 8+, Wild Thing, is about the naughtiest little sister ever.  Out now from Scholastic. 
"Hilarious and heart-warming" The Scotsman

 Wolfie is published by Strident.   Sometimes a Girl’s Best Friend is…a Wolf. 
"A real cracker of a book" Armadillo 
"Funny, clever and satisfying...thoroughly recommended" Books for Keeps


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Emma on Twitter - @EmmaBarnesWrite

JUST IMAGINE – Dianne Hofmeyr

Just imagine a shop that has mice running around the floorboards and creeping out of cracks and nibbling around books. Now imagine a shop with a bright blue, straw beach brolly and a deck chair and shells scattered across the sand and fairy lights and blue paper lanterns and pirate chests and fish swimming around the room. Imagine a window that looks like a set for the Venetian Carnival. Imagine a vast white space with Indian patchwork floor cushions and alphabet letters each decorated by a well-known illustrator… if you can conjure up all this, then you've brought to life Nikki Gamble’s Just Imagine in Chelmsford.

Corrina reading pirate stories

Michelle Lovric's 'Mourning Emporium" conjures up Venice. 

Only someone with Nikki’s energy can attract such talented staff who are able to turn a shop into something much more than a shop – who can organise a Great Piratical Rumbustification with stories of the most dastardly deeds and a chance to learn sea shanties and make pirate hats, who can make mermaid’s grottoes and give advice on how to be a mermaid, or how to make a mermaid’s mirror, as well as advice on the best book to buy – all in the cause of celebrating summer! 

Just Imagine is not a shop. It’s not even a bookshop – although there are plenty of books on its shelves. It’s a Children’s University Accredited Learning Destination. If you are a member you can bring along your special passport and get it stamped. But it doesn’t stop there. In that beautifully calm white adjoining room decorated only with letters of the alphabet to get your imagination soaring, Nikki organises a monthly Illustrators’ group, session of workshops for writers, day courses for teachers and librarians and students – all centred around books.

Out and away beyond the confines of the shop, Just Imagine is involved in school Road Shows and Theatre events. I saw boxes and boxes of different Cinderella books waiting to go off to the foyer of a Cinderella pantomime. Why don’t theatres everywhere think of opening their doors to specialist bookshops? And both schools I visited last week were carefully selected as the perfect match for my story-telling sessions. Nothing Nikki or her staff do, is ever done in half measures. Even the teashop I went off to afterwards had cakes the size of the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Everything at Just Imagine is executed with robust creativity.

I’ll admit to spending much of my day on the floor. It’s hard to be a convincing lion or elephant in front of Reception classes without grovelling about. And in the shop, it was the only way to capture the mice but also the only way to explore the boxes stacked everywhere and the only way to browse the titles on the shelves right close to the floor – because there’s one thing you want to do when you’re in Just 
Imagine is browse
 

It's significant that a book which happened to be face out was Herd Boy by Niki Daly. Significant on all levels as Niki has been a good friend for many years but also because the story is so fitting right now. Malusi, a herd boy, keeps his grandfather’s sheep and goats from straying towards the deep 'donga', which is easy to fall into but hard to climb out of. You have to be brave to be a herd boy. Malusi dreams of being more than a herd boy – of owning a dog and becoming president of the country one day. Nelson Mandela makes an appearance in the story reminding us of his courage and bravery and his beginnings as a humble herd boy… especially poignant right now.

 

Thank you Nikki and Kathleen, Georgia, Tracey, Corrina, Lynne, Emma, Caroline and Mindy for creating such a special world of books at Just Imagine. As Penny Dolan commented in her post yesterday, you have to be brave to be an Independent Bookshop. 

www.diannehofmeyr.com 

latest picture book: THE MAGIC BOJABI TREE published by Frances Lincoln.

The Darkest Day, by Rosalie Warren

I have always loved the winter solstice. There is that sense of being at the bottom of the curve - the sine curve representing the rate of change of day length. This day (and its summer partner) are the times at which the curve flattens, when the rate of change is at it slowest. When nature stops, or so it feels at this end of the year, and gives us time to contemplate.

This Friday 21st December is a special day, too, on the Mayan calendar. I've just been reading about the Mayans and it seems they knew a fair bit about mathematics and made astronomical observations that were way ahead of their time. Not that we have any need to fear. Scientists assure us that there is no truth in the idea that some unusual planetary alignment or asteroid collision will bring the world to an end today - though I can't say I'm enormously relieved to hear this. Humankind is still more than capable of bringing civilisation to an end - and we have already caused the extinction of many species, with more, no doubt, to follow.

 We are also, in some sad cases, willing to bring an end to innocent young human lives. I heard children singing Away in a Manger at a carol service in Peasholm Park, Scarborough, last weekend, and could not hold back my tears, thinking of those poor murdered children and their families in Connecticut.

It's been, for some, a dark, dark year. Many families, even in the relatively prosperous UK, are feeling the pain of increased energy, food and petrol bills, with large numbers out of work or earning barely enough to get by. In many countries, the situation is far worse. It's difficult to feel the hope in the Christmas message of goodwill to all people. It's difficult to go on believing, sometimes, in anything good at all.

Yet new buds are already forming on the trees. Nature struggles on, in spite of pollution, disease and climate change. People struggle on, because they have to. They do it for the sake of their children, their spouses, their parents and their friends. 

Life has not been easy for many writers this year. I'm one of those who has had disappointing news from a publisher. I know that, on the overall scale of things, this is small beer. But it hurts, and I know many fellow writers who are hurting, too. School visits and other events have been severely cut back, because of lack of funding, and those writers who depend on these things to supplement their income are feeling the pinch. Advances have, by all accounts, almost disappeared for the bulk of writers. E-books are doing well in general and some authors are making a fortune, but many have failed to find the sales they hoped for.

It's difficult for readers, too. Libraries have closed or are threatened with closure. The big publishers seem mainly interested in blockbusters and celebrity memoirs and recipes. The supermarkets rule the sales and, where they go, the booksellers must follow. Lots of small, interesting, independent bookshops can no longer afford to carry on.

Meanwhile, small children like two-year-old Jacob, my partner's grandson, adore books. So does his one-year-old sister, Ava. They know nothing of the troubles in the world of writing, but they know what they like. There are wonderful new children's books, everywhere I look. And there are children's authors, slaving away, inspired, inspiring and inspirational - creating words (and objects) of wonder for the new generation to learn to love.

And while all that is happening, I have hope.

Please, fellow children's authors, don't stop. Jacob, Ava and all the others can't wait to get their chubby, sticky little hands on your latest work. Remember that... as you read the latest disappointing or infuriating email from your agent or publisher.

 Times are hard but our children need you, more than ever. They need voices of sanity, sense and sensibility in this crazy world. Whatever happens in the cold out there, please go on creating your warm, sunlit little places where life truly begins. Don't, whatever you do, even think of stopping. The world, which will almost certainly still be here on the 22nd December and for a while beyond that, needs you, your vision, your pictures and your words.


Happy writing, and may the sun shine on your efforts as, according to the Mayans, the new age begins.

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Daunt Books Chelsea – Dianne Hofmeyr

I play games whenever I pass my local bookshop… ‘Today I will not stop. I will not buy another book… Well perhaps… just a short browse.’ But a short browse in Daunt Books is impossible. Before you know it an hour has disappeared. Book lust takes over. I lose myself on dark rainy afternoons or on summer mornings with the sunshine streaming in and the smell of paper rising up thickly in the yellow air. The smell, the touch, the hush. 

The first Daunt Books I ever stepped into was the one in Marylebone Road. In that galleried space I lost myself to the travel books and between the new books, found old unexpected copies of books I didn’t even know I was looking for. The lapis lazuli cover of Sacred Luxuries – Fragrance, Aromatherapy & Cosmetics in Ancient Egypt inspired a teenage novel and The Collected Traveller in Central Italy left me with the taste of vin santo in my mouth. 

My local Daunt in Fulham Road, Chelsea, replaced the Pan Bookshop – a ramshackle dream-palace of a bookshop that I was sad to see disappear. Its disappearance seemed to sum up the demise of the Independent Bookshop – so what joy when Daunt Books rose up from its ashes. And with Independent Booksellers Week about to start (30th June – 7th July) it seems the right time to be talking about favourite bookshops. 

Daunt’s success I think lies in their unique diversity. This is where you’ll find the book that no one else seems to stock… that copy of The Poetics of Space… or that definitive book on Paris… in fact I ended up with three definitive books on Paris thanks to a very helpful assistant… or that American edition of How to make a Book just when you’re doing a book-making course at the V&A.


When I ask Jonathan Ellen, the manager of the Chelsea branch, what makes Daunt Books successful, he answers it’s because they keep no stock, bar the single copy on the shelf that you see and when this is sold another single copy is ordered. No stock room filled with unsold books. If a book you want is not on the shelf, they’ll order it in by the next day. It’s this policy that keeps them making a profit.


In Chelsea they have a glorious children’s book section with plenty of space to sit and browse and read, and be read to, which Jonathan admits sometimes leaves books looking a bit tousled. He says the teenage section is devoted to the latest top sellers so agrees the mid-listers suffer, but in the picture book section, the shelves grown with all and every type of book… old favourites and new unknowns. And talking about unknowns, Jonathan recommended Archie, a picture book by Domenica More Gordon, published by Bloomsbury. It’s making its presence felt with few words and fresh illustrations that tell of a dog who acquires a sewing machine and discovers his forté for canine couture. There’s a creation for everyone including some important corgis.

Daunt Books also run an annual Children’s Short Story competition in three age categories. Winning entries from each age category and extracts from each age category come out annually in a book. This year, Lauren St John was the judge and said of the children’s writing; ‘When imaginations like yours combine with bookshops like Daunt, magic happen’.


I think magic happens everyday in a Daunt bookshop.

www.diannehofmeyr.com

See Domenica More Gordon's promo video for Archie:
www.domenicamoregordon.com/video.html

Daunt Books,
158-164 Fulham Road,

www.dauntbooks.co.uk
Opening hours:
Monday - Saturday 9.00 - 21.00
Sunday 11.00 - 19.00