There’s no better place for children than in a bookshop or library. Heads in books, imaginations working in overdrive.

On Saturdays, when we’ve finished our chores, helping Dad hang the clothes and Mum mow the lawn we set out on journey, into the beyond, to visit our wonder-what wow-ical secret … the bold little bookshop on Ballarat Street.

What our young readers find in their local bookshop is ‘plentiful magic’. Characters from books fill the pages like the cheeky trolls follow them home but Dad says they’ve got to go! From monsters, giants or pirates, to dragons or wizards or wild things that dance. They can’t wait until Saturday comes so they can go back to that magical-make-believe, troll follow, that-one-please, bold little bookshop on Ballarat Street.

We Know A Place is about the wonders of stories inside the covers of a book. But also the place that keeps these treasures and the joy they provide to those that step through its door. Like young imaginations, Beneba Clarke’s illustrations literally fill the pages so they brim with colour.

The little bookshop is also Maxine’s favourite, and she pays it a beautiful tribute with this book.

Reviewed by Merle Morcom
Age Guide 3+

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian poet and writer of Afro-Caribbean descent.

She is the ABIA and Indie award-winning author of Carrying the World (2016), Foreign Soil (2017) and The Hate Race (2018). She is the author of five books for children, including the CBCA and Boston Globe/Horn Prize award-winning picture book The Patchwork Bike (2016, illustrated by Van T Rudd), and the critically acclaimed Wide Big World (2018, illustrated by Isobel Knowles).

Maxine is the author-illustrator of two picture books, Fashionista (2019) and When We Say Black Lives Matter (2020). She also illustrated the picture book 11 Words for Love (2022), written by Randa Abdel-Fattah. We Know A Place is the third picture book she has both written and illustrated.