Corneila answers some questions from Moscow!

We were very excited when one of our favourtie authors Cornelia Funke came into the shop recently to sign all her books for us. Not only was she charming, but also very smart and quick witted! Cornelia took some time to answer our short questionnaire all the way from Moscow and it throws some new light on this amazing author of the Inkheart series and her new book, Reckless.

Q: What was your favourite book when you were young?
Tom Sawyer, the Narnia books and Michael Ende's JIM KNOPF books
Q: Do you have a current favourite book , author or illustrator? If yes, who?
Neil Gaiman is my favourite at the moment. I listened to his books while I was illustrating Reckless and loved every second of it. I'm not even able to decide which of his books is my favourite!

Q: Which of your characters did you most enjoy writing?
I enjoy writing all my characters. Otherwise I wouldn't put them in a book. They are of course all fun in very different ways. Some make you laugh, others make you feel adventurous or curious about them. And in some ways they are all part of me.

Q: Did you always want to be a writer and illustrator?
No, at 11 I wanted to be an astronaut and then later on a pilot. I was a social worker and recorded my own audio books, I also worked on movies but being a writer is for me still the most magical thing and much more wonderful than anything I ever imagined to do.

Q:If you weren't a writer and illustrator, what would you want to be and why?
I have no idea, I guess I would first of all get my pilot's license :)

Q:Are you working on anything new at the moment?
Of course :) I can't live without writing. I am deep into Reckless part 2.

Q: If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be and why?
I think I would choose to be a dragon. I don't think I have to explain to anyone why. What can feel better than flying with the wings and strength of a dragon?

Q: You have twenty-fours hours to do whatever you want. What would you do?
Write :)!

We're set for some fun and games with local author Simon Rose

From Google racing to geo-caching, from code breaking to filmmaking to robot baiting, it's bursting with over 200 new, exciting and creative ideas, for rainy days and sunny afternoons, for children's parties and car journeys, for the few minutes before bed or the whole weekend, and for all ages from 3 to 103.

Join local author Simon Rose in the shop on Sat 13th November at 3pm, where he will show how you and your family can have more fun together -- the 21st-century way. Simon will also be signing copies of his new book too!

Please book your places as space is very limited. Pop into the shop or contact us on by telephone or email.

Oliver Jeffers book signing!

Oliver Jeffers visited the shop last Friday for a book signing and it was busy, busy, busy! He was wonderfully charming and a hit with everyone. Thank you Tiffany and the team at HarperCollins for arranging everything.

Here are some photos of the afternoon and some very pleased fans!

Some of our Little Monsters!

Here are some of the wonderful little monsters and their proud creators at our Halloween event this year. Darcy was so pleased with hers that she also wanted to have her monster's photo taken with her grandpa!

We really enjoy holding these fun family events in the shop for our customers, so please ask to be added to our mailing list for details of all our up-coming events. We will be celebrating our 15th birthday this year, so look out for details of the party!

Thank you to everyone who supports The Golden Treasury, we are proud to be the largest independent children's bookshop in London and so happy that we have a great customer base in Southfields.

All aboard the Ghost Train

We had a brilliant Halloween storytime and craft event on Saturday, where we enjoyed the books Spookyrumpus, good old Funnybones and The Witch's Kitchen. Thank you to the very enthusiastic crowd (young and old!) for the excellent ghostly sound effects.

After storytime, we headed over to the craft tables to assemble our delightful monsters! Everybody stuck and glittered their new Halloween friends to life and we had some great fun all round.

Halloween Winners!

Wow! We were overwhelmed with the wonderful entries in our Halloween colouring competition this year, there were so many great submissions that they filled our entire window.

Thank you so much to everybody who entered, we really enjoyed all the inventive colouring and sticking. It was a hard decision to make, but we chose 5 winners and here are Sammie and William who came to pick-up their prizes on Saturday.