My Own Private World Book Day

It's World Book Day and my newsfeed is full of people either dressed up as something or other, or going off to read their work out to people. Since no one has asked me to do either of those things.. (!) I'm off to visit my favourite bookshops, and a library or two - and to read and write and draw in a few favourite cafes. I'm on the hunt for graphic novels today, I think. Bronze Age Marvel comics are what I'd love to read today. 

And I'm also lugging the new Anne Tyler with me, as well as all my drawing things. And I'm thinking of actually going for it - at last - and illustrating my own kids' book for the first time (what do you think..?). 

But in the mean time - here's a photo to gladden the heart of any bookshop-hound. It's the painted stone stairs into the cellar at the High Street Bookshop, New Mills - which we discovered for the first time yesterday. It's a wonderful place, with an upstairs filled with annuals and novels and 1970s comics and a basement of old vinyl. It's a very good shop, where everything feels lovingly curated, rather than stocked...

(Of course, it's not only bookshops and libraries where you find the best stories. Look at this, found last week, in a corner at the very top of Manchester Museum. (So he *was* real...?!))