story time books

Our hours, for the beginning of 2008 are:

Tuesday to Friday 9 am until 5 pm.

Saturday 10 am until 4 pm.

Sunday & Monday CLOSED

Remember: We can order any book which is in print in New Zealand, and have it in the shop for you in anything from two days to two weeks depending on the supplier. Some suppliers have warehouses in Australia, so naturally take a little longer to get books to us.

I’d like to wish all customers and web browsers a very Merry Christmas, a happy 2008 and safe journeys over the holiday season. It’s raining here today, as it was yesterday, but as it’s the first rain since mid-November we can’t complain and the plants are loving it.

Thanks to those who have bought books this year, and I hope to see you all again next year, along with others who have heard about our great selection and service.

From the writer who brought us The Big Block of Chocolate, Janet Slater Bottin, with illustrations by Graeme Kyle comes this little fable about the little green man in the pedestrian crossing signal. He wants to do something more significant and runs away one day. After a few adventures he returns to find a very large queue which only he can reduce, and realises that his original occupation was right for him after all. Some verse, some prose, and illustrations which will keep the observant child busy for hours looking at all the details of the people in the queue.

Story Time will be open until 8 pm on Thursday nights in December. So if you would prefer to shop for children’s Christmas presents without them, come along on a Thursday evening. Playdays, the educational toyshop on the other side of Jackson St just past Bay Street, and opposite the clock tower, is also open on Thursdays for December.

Chris Whitmarsh, who imagined and started Story Time Books for Kids in 1998, died on Friday after a long illness. Over the nearly nine years Chris ran Story Time she built relationships with parents, grandparents, children, suppliers’ reps, teachers, librarians and others at the shop, and many of those people remember her with deep affection, having visited Chris regularly throughout those years. She had a vast knowledge of children’s books and children themselves, and helped many customers find the right book for the right child at the right time.

Our thoughts are with her family and friends as they come to terms with their loss. Chris’s funeral service will be held at Cornwall Manor in Lower Hutt on Thursday 6 December at 11 am. Story Time will be closed from 10.30 until 12.30.