You have probably heard of Cole’s Book Arcade, a highly successful business in Melbourne that became an institution. Founded by Edward William Cole, it was more of a theme park with a tea salon, live monkeys, mechanical men, optical illusions and a live band, among other attractions. The family of eight lived above the bookshop and the facade of the building had a very large rainbow. It was also a publishing enterprise, with Cole’s Funny Picture Book, being its most well-known title.
Amelia Mellor has taken this historical setting and used it to create a wonderful fantasy. Cole’s daughter, Ruby, died when she was eight from scarlet fever. Mellor has taken her father’s grief and used it to create the basis for the plot. A mysterious character known as The Obscurosmith, has appeared and done a deal with Pa to bring Ruby back to life in exchange for the arcade and all it contains. However, the Ruby he delivers is a trick imitation of the real girl.
Two of Ruby’s siblings, Pearl and Vally, challenge The Obscurosmith to a game to win the arcade back. He sets them seven challenges to solve in 28 hours. Riddles involving flowers need to be deciphered, each challenge is in a different section of the store and the staff also help out. The challenges get harder, other members of the family become involved and the physical Book Arcade and its people start to deteriorate. Who will win?
This is an original, engrossing fantasy with the added bonus of having a beautiful cover with gold lettering and rainbow endpapers.
Reviewed by Lynne Babbage
Age Guide 10+
READ A BOOK REVIEW OF THE BOOKSELLER’S APPRENTICE BY AMELIA MELLOR.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
It was 1998, my grandpa had some old concrete pipes on his farm, and one day while playing near them, I had a sudden powerful belief that if I jumped off them, I would fly.
I jumped off. I didn’t fly … yet.
But I was airborne for a second, and in my five-year-old mind, that meant it was achievable. At home, I tied together three plastic bags with a piece of wool from Steiner kinder. This was to be my parachute, in case I didn’t get the hang of flying straight away. I put my arms through the parachute straps (more Steiner wool), climbed as far up the cubby-house ladder as I dared – about halfway – and jumped.
Only one second of flying again.
This was going to take a few more tries.
I didn’t fly off the swing set with six plastic bags; the crepe myrtle tree with ten plastic bags; or the top of the slide with 17 plastic bags. I would have gone higher if I could have, with a bigger parachute. However, I had used all the bags in the house by then, and landing was starting to make my feet hurt, and Mum and Dad said that if landing made my feet hurt then that was probably high enough.
But no matter how many times I crashed into the lawn instead of soaring over the rooftops, I would not permit anybody to say I was ‘trying’ to fly. ‘Trying’ implied a possibility of failure. ‘Trying’ invalidated those precious seconds that I was in the air. When they spoke within earshot of me, everyone had to say I was practising.
Becoming a writer was kind of like that, too.
WRITING
It was a goal I set when I was too young to know it was unrealistic. I launched tons of prototypes, and crashed them all – many times, in some cases, and often painfully. And I pursued it with such earnest, stubborn focus that I took all scepticism not as sensible warnings, but as foolishness I hadn’t disproven yet.
Fortunately for my poor little feet, flying lost its gleam after a month or so without progress – but writing never has.
I’ve loved words and books since I was a baby. I decided I wanted to be a writer when I was three years old, but I didn’t know writing was an actual job, so I said I wanted to ‘work in a shop surrounded by books that I have written.’ Before I knew how to read, I would ask my parents and relatives to read the same books to me until I memorised them and could recite them to myself.
One of the first things I ever ‘wrote’ wasn’t written at all: it was a one-child play about the untimely demise of my pet chicken, which I solemnly performed with a silk scarf on the back porch for my mum (who got it all on film) and my sisters (who thought the camera was for them).
We moved to the Mornington Peninsula when I was seven, where we had more space, more pets, and when my brother was born, more siblings. I started writing in my free time in Grade Three. By the end of Grade Five, I was writing about ghosts, time travel, monsters and body-swapping on Windows 98 in my dad’s freezing study every night.
As a teenager on the school bus, I wore the letters off the keys of my school laptop writing stories about crab aliens, dark sorcery and interdimensional travel. And of course, I went to Writers’ Club every week, where students gave each other feedback on their work in lunchtime sessions (a great way to get used to editorial feedback early in your career!).
I wrote the middle-school play, The Glass Street Ghost, when I was in VCE. That production was the first time I witnessed the impact of one of my stories. It seemed like a miracle that other people could understand and enjoy something that had once existed only in my head — and I still get that magical feeling whenever people talk about my books.
I majored in Creative Writing at the University of Melbourne, and I have a Master of Teaching Primary and Secondary from Monash University. I’ve worked as a nanny, tutor, grape-picker, copy writer, teacher and bookshop assistant; and I’ve written at studios at Glenfern in Saint Kilda, and the Old Melbourne Gaol.
Stories of mine have been shortlisted for the Ampersand Prize and the Grace Marion Wilson Emerging Writers’ Contest. I’ve also developed a manuscript through an Australian Society of Authors Mentorship. The Grandest Bookshop in the World was my debut novel in 2020 – but that’s been such an eventful journey that I had to put it on its own page.
After two years living and teaching in Victoria’s Alpine Valley, I now live in Melbourne, in a Neapolitan-ice-cream-coloured flat full of matryoshkas. I love visiting schools and libraries, supporting literary events, and hearing from readers. When I’m not writing, I like to draw, go for walks, and fuss over my garden and my fish tank.
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