Jo Pearson welcomes us inside Pictura Children’s Book Shop, where she sells hand-picked illustrated books for children.
Pictura opened in early 2022 in the wee harbour town of Port Chalmers, 15 minutes or so from Dunedin city centre. I have an arts background and have always been passionate about illustration and children’s books particularly—they’re my kryptonite. I also work in the book publishing industry as a designer and more recently an illustrator, so Pictura is this lovely little place where I get to nerd-out on beautiful books with other booklovers whilst working on books at the same time. It’s a lovely thing.
Recently I’ve been recommending The Remarkables by Clotilde Perrin. This one is as large as life as Clotilde’s other books. Children always gravitate to her huge, spooky, lift-the-flap books in the store, so it’s great to see another book from her. I also love Jess Hannigan’s Spider in the Well which is hilarious and uniquely illustrated. A very impressive debut!
I’m looking forward to picture book The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by UK author Mikey Please which has mad illustrations and a great premise. I’m also keen to see the upcoming graphic novel of War of the Worlds, illustrated by Chris Mould.
In the shop I try to find a balance between having something to please everyone, and enough interesting things to satisfy my own curiosity, but I don’t always get it right. I found myself recently with a worryingly large collection of quite dark books about death and grief—I’m not sure what that says about me! They do sell and they absolutely have their place, but perhaps not as fast as other books on my shelves…
I enjoy matching people with books—that’s probably the best part of the job. When someone has an obscure request and you think, ‘Ah! I’ve just the thing’. Actually speaking of grief, the one that stands out is not long after I opened, a lady came in having recently suffered the loss of her husband, and I gave her a picture book about grief for her wee son. It was humbling and made me appreciate how profoundly important books can be in children’s lives.
…how profoundly important books can be in children’s lives
I wish there were more opportunities in New Zealand for artists to develop their skills in children’s illustration, and subsequently more risks taken with the kinds of illustrators getting publishing opportunities. Long story short, I’d love to see more and more Aotearoa-based illustrators getting their chance to shine.
Port Chalmers is very quiet six months of the year (an introvert’s dream), and then for six months we are inundated with cruise ship passengers. Thousands of them. Unless there’s a kiwi on the cover they don’t tend to buy a lot of books from me, so I find myself trying to traverse the fine line between satisfying their needs and remaining true to my vision. If I sold purely fridge magnets, I’d probably be a lot richer than I am (alas…).
Bookshop Day is always a fun day for me, so I’m looking forward to that this weekend! It always signals a shift—in sales, in optimism. It’s not been an easy year to be in the bookselling business or any retail business for that matter, so honestly I’m just grateful to still be here!
Check out Pictura Children’s Book Shop at 52 George Street, Port Chalmers, or online at https://www.picturabooks.co.nz/. You can follow the store on Facebook and Instagram.