All This & a Bookshop Too

Book excerpt: Dorothy Butler (OBE) is recognised internationally as an authority on children's books and reading. She has won many major awards for her work in England, Japan, the United States and New Zealand and was declared a Distinguished Alumna of Auckland University. As well as her academic achievements, Dorothy has been a successful teacher, an innovative bookseller and the author of many much-loved children's books, all the while raising eight lively children with her husband Roy. Now in her eighties, she lives in the heritage home in Karekare that her family lovingly restored. In All This and a Bookshop Too, Dorothy shares the story of her adult life. Picking up from the first volume of her autobiography, There Was a Time, Dorothy writes eloquently of her many consuming interests, her notable friendships and her family. This is both an affecting account of private triumphs and tragedies, and a salute to the golden age of children's book publishing in New Zealand.