10th October Love Your Bookshop Day

 

The 2026 theme: Ask a bookseller. Shake up your shelf.

Booksellers know that finding your next great read isn’t always about what’s trending or what everyone else is reading. A conversation with a bookseller can introduce you to a new author, an unexpected favourite or exactly the right book at exactly the right time.

Yes, bookshops help to create and keep readers.

Every time a customer purchases a book in a bookshop they are contributing to the survival of a shop, the availability of skilled staff and the ability to talk about books and share impressions, enriching the booksellers and the customers.

When buying online, especially through monolithic book clearing houses, or department stores there is no investment in the local literary culture. There is not the opportunity to talk about books and reading, so this Saturday visit a bookshop, explore a new genre or buy something for a booklover.

Next best thing, read about the joys of a bookshop.

At The I Wonder Bookstore, customers come in and ask the owner countless variations on its namesake question ("I wonder if you have any books about  and he is happy to fill their requests in enchanting ways.

There's a mysterious bookshop, tucked away fromthe world, with a rather unusual bookseller... Mr Leopard!

Not only does Mr Leopard sell the most exciting
books, he also has a whole team of animals creating
the very best stories for children

A loveletter to bookshops and the space they provide for discovery and delight. A little boy adores visiting the old bookshop down Lemon Tree Lane with his grandpa – its nooks and crannies, its endless stories, and even the bookshop dog at the back. That is, until the day the owners box up the books, take down the shelves and lock the doors, and the bookshop is no more. 

Astrid's family has just moved in to the mouse hole in the bookshop on Maple Street, and none of her new classmates believes the incredible adventures she has with her family. But when she invites each of them to the bookshop, they'll see that there is a big, exciting world of possibilities there, just waiting to be discovered.

Milly loves going to story time at her local bookshop. Mrs Minty is an encyclopedia of books and knows the perfect story for every occasion ... tales of mischievous children and faraway lands, magical beasts and daring adventures. But the bookshop is old and creaky, just like Mrs Minty herself. And then one day Milly arrives to find the shop gone. What has happened to Mrs Minty and her irreplaceable bookshop?

And just in time for Halloween

Books are magic! Bookshops are spectacular! Don't believe us? Join Henry as he helps Griselda Snook on the opening day of her spooky bookshop! From hunting down runaway jack-o'-lanterns to banishing dragons, Henry loves his day spent in Griselda's bookshop, and he especially likes helping booklovers to find their next read. But can Henry find the perfect book for him?

11th October Love Your Bookshop Day

Great excuse to go to your favourite bookshop and spend some money!

Off you go!

We need to support our local bookshops. Buying a book online that someone has recommended is nothing like the experience you have when you find a 'gem' in a bookshop that you just have to have. 

7th October Love Your Bookshop Day

As you know I love bookshops...they are my happy place! I have certainly been in some very good independent ones in the last couple of months. I do still try to most of the school library shopping at bookshops, one in particular because I like to see what I think I want to buy before I purchase it. For this reason I hope independent bookshops continue to exist. I don't want to buy sight unseen online.

I have written about this day and given book suggestions before, here, but here's some that I forgot to mention or which are new to me, since then.

• The Bookshop Mice  by Robert Starling.

• Mr Leopard's Bookshop  by Alexa Brown and Julia Christians

• Dakota Crumb and the Secret Bookshop by Jamie Michalak and Kelly Murphy

and some 'magical' novels for 8+

• The Travelling Bookshop  by Katrina Nannested and Cheryl Orsini (4 books)

• The Bookshop at the Back of Beyond  by Amy Sparkes

• The Magic Story Shop  by Katje Frixe

• The Bookshop of Dust and Dreams by Mindy Thompson

3rd October The Big Draw 1st -31st October

I have just returned from a holiday overseas. The pretence was to visit my daughter who lived in London, but while there we had a holiday in Portugal. Of course while away I visited many bookshops. and I was pleasantly surprised by how good the were at promoting children's books. They had a good stock, the children's book section was often closer to the front of the shop than it would be here, there was always children's titles in the window and they often had a special display. This was the case in both England and Portugal.

While in England I noticed that a couple of the book shops had special displays of books about drawing. Now I know that wasn't coincidental. During October in England they have a festival of drawing known as The Big Draw. "The Big Draw is a pioneering visual literacy charity dedicated to raising the profile of drawing as a tool for wellbeing, thought, creativity, social and cultural engagement."

Thus the books on drawing. There were books about how to draw by well known illustrators such as

Rob Biddulph

• My First Draw with Rob 

• Draw with Rob Amazing Animals 

• Draw with Rob in Space 

Charise Mericle Harper

• I Cannot Draw a Horse

• I Cannot Draw a Bicycle

Marion Deuchars

• Draw This!

• Art Play

• Draw, Paint, Print Like Great Artists.

James Mayhew

• Learn to Draw with Katie

Axel Scheffler

 How to Draw Gruffly and Friends

Ed Emberley

• How to Draw Monsters and More Scary Stuff

• Drawing Book of Faces

Mo Willems

• Doodling 101

• We're in an Art-ivity Book

Donovan Bixley

• Draw Some Awesome

Nick Sharratt

• How to Draw

Bluey

• Bluey: How to Draw

And of course there are lots of illustrators showing children how to draw on Youtube. Watch and see your children have fun. The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education CLPE has amazing resources online. Sign up for free.

If you have children in your class who don't want to draw or who say they can't draw search out drawing books about things they are interested in eg unicorns, cars, trucks, dinosaurs, animals, there's a book for nearly every topic.

There are wonderful books about drawing that will be good to read aloud and discuss such as:

• Everyone Can Draw  by Fifi Kuo

• Little Pea's Drawing School by Davide Cali and Sébastien Mourrain

• Dinosaurs Don't Draw by Elli Woollard and Steven Denton

• When I Draw a Panda  by Amy June Bates

There's even more drawing books to explore here.

8th October Love Your Bookshop Day

Love Your Bookshop Day 2022 (#LYBD2022) is an annual celebration of everything local bookshops do from fostering expert staff and curating fabulous ranges to creating events programs to celebrate authors, readers, and the books they cherish. 

We do need to support our local bookshops because the thought of not being able to browse new books before buying or ordering scares me. I love bookshops, even if I usually only look in the children's section. There are so many adult novels set in bookshops. Think 84 Charing Cross Road; The Little Paris Bookshop; The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. That made me wonder about how many children's books were set in a bookshop.

Well there are some:

•  Maisie Goes to the Bookshop by Lucy Cousins

• The Bookshop Cat by Cindy Wume

• Franklin's Flying Bookshop by Jen Campbell and Katie Harnett

• The Little Bookshop and Origami Army by Michael Foreman

• Dog Loves Books by Louise Yates

• Good Night Little Bookstore by Amy Cherrix and E. B Goodale

• The Magic Bookshop  by Natalie Jane Prior and Cheryl Orsini

• Jasper and Scruff: Hunt for the Golden Bone by Nicola Colten

• The Missing Bookshop by Katie Clapham and Kirsti Beautyman

• The Magical Bookshop by Katja Frixe

• The Travelling Bookshop by Katrina Nannestad and Cheryl Orsini

This is a series of three, soon to be four books about Mim Cohen who roams the world in a travelling bookshop, with her dad, brother and a horse called Flossy.

• The Bookshop Girl by Sylvia Bishop and Ashley King

This story is about a little girl named Property Jones, so-called because she was left in the lost property cupboard of a bookshop when she was five years old.

• Pages and Co by Anna James

This too, is a series of books about eleven year old Tilly who lives with her grandparents above their bookshop.Tilly loves escaping into the pages of her favourite stories.

• Sylvia's Bookshop by Robert Burleigh and Katy Wu

Told by the bookstore itself, Sylvia's Bookshop tells the story of the legendary Shakespeare and Company, its owner Sylvia Beach, and the many great writers who gathered there to meet, read, and remind us that books are more than the words on the page.

and coming soon 

• The Bookshop Mice by Robert Starling.