The Little Bookroom

When my wife and I were in the city yesterday we came across a beautiful new bookshop we'd heard some friends at uni talking about: The Little Bookroom on Degraves Street. The Little Bookroom is a small independent bookshop specialising in children's literature; their main branch is in Carlton North. My wife studied children's literature as part of her English major, and we've both studied fairy tales, so we have quite a collection of illustrated children's books on our bookshelves at home.

The Little Bookroom, Degraves Street, Melbourne

We saw some absolutely beautiful books there, including some incredible limited printings of Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days and the complete Beatrix Potter, but my favourite collectible was on display at the front of the store: a limited edition of Shaun Tan's The Arrival, housed in a unique briefcase with a book of sketches and a signed print from the book. If I had five hundred disposable dollars I'd have bought it right there, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. Oh well. My wife and I do, however, have signed first editions of a number of Tan's books, including The Arrival, and we had the pleasure of meeting him at Aussiecon 4 last year (my wife also met him when he gave a talk at Monash University a few years earlier). Tan's short film The Lost Thing, which we got to see at Aussiecon 4 and now have on DVD, just won an Oscar.

Limited edition of Shaun Tan's The Arrival