On Saturday October 7, The Book Warehouse will be offering a free bookmark making session for all ages and in-store giveaways to encourage its local community to support Love Your Bookshop Day – an annual celebration of the unique role local bookshops play in their communities.
The theme for this year’s LYBD, created by BookPeople, a not-for-profit and peak industry body that represents bookshops across the country, is ‘Giving the Gift of Imagination’.
Bookshops offer people much more than a book. They present limitless portals to different worlds through imagination. Visiting a bookshop provides people with an opportunity to be transported to wherever they want to go, maybe it’s climbing a multi-storey treehouse to find the marshmallow machine, a trip to the outer edges of the universe exploring Arrakis, or even back in time to watch the first pages of the Oxford dictionary come together.
Award-winning Australian author-illustrator and LYBD2023 ambassador Maxine Beneba Clarke understands this more than most, with her latest picture book, We Know a Place, being a joyous illustrated tribute to bookshops everywhere, and the special place they hold in children’s hearts and minds.
Clarke says, “Walking through the door of a bookshop is like walking into another world. Time slows down. I always feel like when I walk in the door, I’m saying: ‘Ok world, what have you got? Wow me. Intrigue me. Move me. Infuriate me. Excite me.’ To be part of that equation as a writer and know that a reader might stumble upon one of the worlds I’ve created especially for them and take it home to treasure and enjoy makes the experience even more magical.”
Robbie Egan, Chief Executive Office at BookPeople, explains that reading plays a vital role in fostering imagination with more than nine in ten (92%) Australians believing reading is one of the best ways to foster imagination. Top reasons include; it builds knowledge and understanding of new things (58%), allows people to escape from everyday mundaneness (58%), and stimulates thinking (57%).
Clarke adds, “A bookshop does things to people. When you look around, you see them content, relaxed, open, curious – ready to engage with other stories, and wonders, and worlds. A bookshop is a place of dreams, imagination and possibility: all things we need more of, in this fast-paced and increasingly digital world.
BookPeople is encouraging individuals and organisations to also show their support on the day by sharing and tagging their local bookshops using #LYBD2023 across social media.
For more information on what The Book Warehouse, Grafton is doing this LYBD2023, visit their Facebook page.
About BookPeople:
BookPeople is the industry association for Australia’s bookshops, representing booksellers from every state and territory across the country. Formerly known as the Australian Booksellers Association, BookPeople provides services to support bookshops of all types and sizes. For more information visit bookpeople.org.au.