The Snug Children’s Bookshop Olney
The Snug Children’s Bookshop is an exciting new and specialist children’s bookshop in the heart of Olney marketplace Buckinghamshire. The Snug is run by the dedicated and passionate Rose to promote children’s literacy and nurture young people’s emotional health in this beautiful, rural town. Rose also has renovated a gorgeous little bus to promote the fun of reading that can go around the villages, schools and local summer festivals.
Grace is an amazing, miniature, cherry-red, double-decker, with chocolate and cherry velvet doughnuts for children to sit on and read. Upstairs on the bus are books for older children, downstairs for the younger children.
Grace the Olney children’s bookbus is named in honour of John Newton, clergyman of Olney who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace in 1772.
The Snug offers a broad range of over 8,000 books, as well as a vast range available online in their online children’s bookshop with next day delivery – Rose offers books suitable for all children of all ages and seeking to support learning needs.
With a background in child protection social work, then representing young people in care proceedings, formerly as a guardian ad litem, and latterly, a barrister representing families, children and social workers.
Rose has consolidated her professional experience through providing support to parents and children with a helpful haven of fun for all children in a bookshop. Rose has a particular interest in supporting the most vulnerable children. She has through her career developed a true understanding of how young lives, bereft of the nurturing love they needed to thrive in challenging circumstances, and the absence of bedtime stories and older adventures that would have given them the escape they needed from their real lives need access to books, and also the parents, schools, therapists and carers also.
Rose started The Snug in February 2020, and bought the Bookbus, Grace the Bookbus, in 2019. Rose uses every opportunity to nurture resilience and self-belief with children and teens in her shop through books with her personal warmth.
Rose seeks to support all parents with their child, from pregnancy through to ‘A’ levels and leaving home. To offer support to foster parents, exhausted parents of sleep challenged children. To parents and children who are sadly bereaved, or whose parents are unwell.
With that wealth of experience Rose’s shop seeks to offer specialist children’s books to support all who work with children through family transitions, social workers, therapists and youth workers when undertaking their skilled work with children.
- Favourite books of the month highlighted
- On-line website with home-delivery, developed in response to the pandemic of Covid-19
- Birthday-wrapped surprise (blind-book & favourite chocolate treat)
- Personal support with books to promote literacy, support with parenting, special needs etc
- Lunchtime school visit with Grace the Bookbus – The Olney Children’s Book Bus to promote the fun of reading in the bus during lunch hours, with used books
- ‘Hub-in-the-Snug’- the review team of children, of all ages, share their thought on books they’ve read
- Festivals / school fetes – (storytime on the bus and book sales)
- Links to special educational needs co-ordinators supporting EHCP planning
- Informal lunch hour Q&A every week with special needs advisors
- Storytime in the Snug – every morning 11am-11.30am- 2-5yr olds
- Private Special-needs story-time x1 pw (SEN Co-ordinator)
- Easter – Egg Hunt
- Gift Cards for The Snug
- Gift Books for expectant mums, new mums & babies
Book Selection – In addition to the broad range of baby books, early readers, independent and young adult fiction covering adventure, travel, friends and more, plus fact-books on science, history, DNA we have so much more.
Special Education needs – Books supporting parents with special education needs (SEN) diagnosis, physical and mindfulness activities, parental-resilience, emotional-resilience for the child in the areas of (autism, dyslexia, Asperger’s, ADHD, body dysmorphia and more). Tailored Fiction for children -Dyslexia-friendly (special font/coloured paper) and ‘super-readables’ for those children who might otherwise find it hard to find something they like and are reluctant to read.
Teen Support books – supporting adolescents through periods of anxiety, (associated with school, peer exclusion, transition between families, step-parents, clique exclusion, depression, cyber, social or physical bullying, exam pressures, parental-expectation/pressure, applying for jobs, boyfriend /girlfriends). Teen cookbooks to support their independent choice and control of healthy eating.
Healthy mind-healthy body – Age-appropriate books to support acceptance of a healthy body shape and diversity (-3-5yrs, 6-12yrs, 12-15yrs, 15+ – (both boys and girls), Menstruation, body changes, including books for girls on the autism spectrum to support them with the menstrual cycle.
Support books for parenting – babies/toddlers who cannot sleep, cookery books & toilet-training
Managing Feelings – support for social-emotional development awareness in children – learning self-regulation of anger, interrupting etc (shyness- sharing- anxiety- social skills- making friends- taking responsibility for behaviours).
Books for Siblings – new baby support for existing child, bereavement of a sibling, fiction, for siblings (of children with special learning needs), where the experience for the sibling is drawn-out and supports the child. Excellent for schools who want to be inclusive as it shows the true experience from all sides, not just expecting the child with special needs to adapt, but for all the children to be aware of each other’s needs. Very similar to the book ‘Wonder’, and how revelatory that was for all children who had not previously thought how it was for a child with a disfigurement to manage their mainstream environment.
Books to support children (& their foster carers) – who have experienced childhood trauma, (neglect/ violence/ parental-alcoholism), and now in alternative care /fostering (e.g: guide to support emotional over-eating, timidity/fearfulness, sleep-issues, confidence etc)
Bereavement – Books for children who have lost a parent, sibling, friend, grandparent, pet. Support books for children whose parent/carer has terminal illness and subsequently dies.
Mental health – (for example – books to support children whose parents are being supported with post-natal depression and their home receives multiple and for the child, what are potentially confusing professional visits).
Depression – colour picture-books, poetry explaining how it is for a child whose parent has depression.
Masses of Environmental books – Bees, Cross-pollination, Birds, Bears, Wolves, Planet-wide books on the earth, seas, mountains and sky, outer-space…. bugs, butterflies, whales, dinosaurs, lions, jellyfish…plastic pollution, recycling and leaders of the environmental revolution.
Gender – Anthology of Amazing Women, Women scientists, historians, game-changers in all areas of development across the world. Books extolling the skills and contributions of women from all cultures through the ages to the present day, promoting STEM in science, technology, engineering and manufacturing promoting women’s involvement and highlighting the fun of the subjects to encourage young people, especially girls, to take up these subjects in greater numbers … beautiful books
Young people made a difference – various books showing how a positive mindset, determination and tenacity will bring a project through…. global examples.
Mindfulness – books for all ages- promoting the importance of caring for your mental health, emotional needs, stress-management, skills to de-stress.
Fiction – A myriad of classics – Winnie-the-Pooh, Alice in Wonderland, Paddington, through to Jules Verne and C.S Lewis, Louisa May Alcott -Little Women and lots and lots of new and recent publishings every month.
For the Very Young – Hundreds of gorgeously illustrated softback picture books and board books for -7yr olds, (many promoting important key themes of awareness of the environment, sharing, playing kindly and the importance of friendship over acquisition of toys/skills).
Independent and robust readers – Thrilling Adventures of 14yr old MI5 agents on missions from the Amazon to the Alps. Powerful evacuee stories of the second-world war alongside refugee fiction from the Syrian war. Trilogies and book-sets of animal-loving rescuers, Fantasy and much much more.
Contact
23 Market Place, Olney, Buckinghamshire, MK46 4BA
Email: thesnugbooks@gmail.com
Telephone: 07710 404209
Website: www.thesnugbooks.co.uk
Social Media
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesnugbookshopforchildren/
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