Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Many thanks to all our customers for another great year of bookselling and publishing. I am so lucky to have such a great team of staff in the shop and wonderful authors and illustrators who want to work with me. I can assure you that every purchase in the shop, online or from your local bookshop is much appreciated. Bookselling and publishing is a risky business – there’s so much competition out there!

Last year we had a very quiet start in the shop, but on the publishing side we were busy putting together our first book of 2024 – Yum by Susi Briggs and featuring the art work of Charlotte Brayley. The book was launched at the Big DoG festival in Dumfries, an event organised by the team at the Wigtown Book Festival Company. Yum is a lovely book in Scots about learning to share. Susi was the Scots Scriever for the National Library of Scotland at the time.

At the same time we were also working with author and illustrator (and working vet), Catherine Stables, on a special version of Shona the Vet: A Coast to Coast Adventure that was distributed to every primary school in Scotland. We had been approached by a great organisation called Future-Vets Scotland who are campaigning to highlight careers in veterinary science. The project was supported by all the veterinary training schools in Scotland. It’s amazing to think that there is a copy of Catherine’s debut book in every school.

At Easter we also launched Catherine’s follow up story – Shona the Vet: City Wildlife Rescue which saw the intrepid vet and her trusty companion travel across the central belt of Scotland to help wildlife in distress including an otter at the Falkirk Wheel, and an urban fox in Glasgow.

There was no time to catch breath as coming along just behind the new Shona adventure was a gorgeous picture book from Louisa MacDougall. Louisa had been sending out manuscripts and almost getting there with competitions and publishers for some years. And then, like buses, three offers all came along together! So just a couple of weeks after her early reader was published by Little Door books, we launched The Highland Cowgirl with fabulous illustrations from Sarah Lovell, who is currently based in British Columbia, Canada. The Highland Cowgirl has proved to be our most successful books so far!

And in the autumn we helped to put together a book about a local legend based on a Victorian poem called The Langhill Fairy. The idea behind the project came from artist Fran Raw who had created lino cut illustrations for the original poem and worked with Gary Martin of New Chapter Books to present a translation from the Scots. The book was launched at New Chapter Books during the annual Wigtown Book Festival. The Festival also featured Susi Briggs with her Scots Language books, and Louisa with The Highland Cowgirl.

We’re excited to say that we have several books planned for this year and we’re currently working on two titles that should be ready by Easter. The first is another adventure for Shona the Vet, this time she’s taking a break from her wildlife work to go down to the farm and help with some large animals. And we’re also hoping to bring you a new Betty and Archie story illustrated by Caroline Smith. We’ll keep you posted.