Mike Lucas, (text) and Sofya Karmazina (illustrator), The Bookshop on Lemon Tree Lane, Little Hare, June 2025, 32 pp., RRP $24.99 (pbk), ISBN 9781760506988
Grandpa and the (unnamed) grandson often visit the bookshop on Lemon Tree Lane. It is one of their favourite places. It’s been there for a long time but it is about to close for renovations and the little boy is worried that it won’t ever be the same. And of course it isn’t. But perhaps, the child wonders when the shop opens again, he likes it even more than the old one.
This is a delightful story both about accepting and embracing change and the close relationship of child and grandparent. It is also a celebration of bookshops and the treasures they hold. The story is told in rhyming couplets which gives it an almost ballad like rhythm and makes it perfect for reading aloud.
The illustrations evoke the delightful, but rather tumbledown appearance of the old bookshop – the ‘rickety staircase’ has banister railings that look distinctly worse for wear and some of the bookcases have a rather suspicious lean to them, for example. The new bookshop is depicted as lighter and airier with new furniture and a brand-new staircase. The illustrations thus enhance and expand the written text, showing the reader the many changes without necessarily spelling them out. The layout of the illustrations is varied with some double-page spreads, some single page and others with patches of white.
The endpapers echo the change to the shop as the front papers represent the cracked, stained and mis-matched tiles of the old (repeated in the depictions of the shop in the book) and the final endpapers showing the brand-new white and green tiles of the renovated shop.
Grandpa and the child continue to enjoy their trips to the bookshop where they find that there is one thing still the same – the bookshop dog is as much a part of the new shop as she was of the old. The author’s note at the end points out that change is part of life, his bookshop has changed many times, but, like that in Lemon Tree Lane, the bookshop dog is still there.
Reviewed by Margot Hillel
