"Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees." - E. F. Schumacher
Hello!
Please allow us to introduce ourselves ... |  |
Little Acorn Books is a small (ie: teeny-tiny!), family-owned-and-operated bookstore, currently based online and at the markets here in Brisbane. It is our dream to have a real, 'bricks and mortar' store, like the one on the Contact Us page. Ah, such exciting dreams we have ... a beautiful store with a workshop space, and a little theatre attached, for starters! For the moment, though, you'll find us here, online, and at the markets.
To tell you a little about ourselves, we are a home-educating, AP family of avid bookworms. (Opening a new shipment of books is always cause for great excitement around here!) Aside from books, books, and more books, Juliette has a passion for the emotionally intelligent/conscious parenting paradigm, travel (the Alhambra in Granada, Spain, being her favourite place on the entire planet ... so far!), collecting vintage crockery, the Expressive Therapies, numerology, and Aura Soma. Having grown up on a 50,000 acre property in the middle of the Queensland outback, Heath is a strong advocate for embracing a simpler, 'slower' life, and is passionate about mindful, simplicity parenting. A home-educated lad himself, he loves archery, martial arts & Bushido, permaculture (actually, all things 'sustainability'), and being in Mother Earth's wild, natural spaces. Our adventurous son, Ethan, is also a fervent martial artist, with a strong fascination for dragons, treehouses, architecture, and the idea of travelling to many and varied, far-flung places of our world, like his parents and grandparents before him. (Wanderlust must be hereditary!) When he's not enjoying the view from the highest branch of the tallest tree, Ethan can usually be found curled up somewhere with a good book ... he always has a book or two with him, wherever he goes. As one of his favourite characters, Alcuin, says in Nadia Wheatley's The Greatest Treasure of Charlemagne the King, "A sensible person never goes anywhere without a book." Quite so!
Little Acorn Books' Beginnings:
Our little store came to be in 2007 when we found that it was very difficult to source the books that we wanted for our family, from here in Australia. We'd read about fabulous titles over the internet, but they typically weren't available here. While bookstores could get most of them in for us (if we were prepared to wait for six to eight weeks), we ultimately got tired of constantly having to wait so long. Reasoning that we couldn't possibly be the only family, teacher, librarian, or counsellor that wanted access to these high-quality, meaningful resources, we decided to start our own store (as you do!), importing a large percentage of our titles from overseas. Some of our customers will remember us from our former eBay days, where we first started. (While we no longer operate our eBay store, our feedback from across 500 individual customers is still viewable, if you'd like to read some of the testimonials.) We have since continued to build up our store and our range, and are excited to offer titles that are typically unavailable elsewhere in Australia. We derive enormous satisfaction from knowing that we are making these important titles readily available and accessible to like-minded Australian families, libraries, and schools.
Workshops:
In addition to our books and other lovely resources, we are currently developing a series of children's workshops aimed at empowering children to realise their full potential ... nurturing the mighty oak within! Entitled 'Nurturing Spirituality and Values in Children', these workshops draw strongly on the work of Peggy Joy Jenkins, as well as harnessing the wisdom, energy and work of other inspiring authors and teachers. We'll be sure to let you know when these classes are ready to begin. If you're interested in learning more about these, or in putting your name down in advance to hold a place, please let us know.
We are also studying to become 'Simplicity Parenting' Leaders, so that we can offer the wonderful, gentle work of Kim John Payne here in Australia. We'll let you know when these workshops are up and running! Further, at the request of some of our customers, Juliette is putting together some classes for those parents who are interested in numerology, and who would like to have greater insight into themselves and their children. Again, if you're interested in learning more about these workshops, please let us know. We'd love to see you there!
Our Market Stall:
We thought we'd share with you some photos of our market stall, which has grown quite a lot since the early days. (A big shout-out and "Thank you!" to Paul, our former Market Manager, for his kind support since we first started.) If you're ever in Brisbane of a weekend, please feel free to come and say, 'Hello!' We're at the fabulous Northey Street Organic Markets in Windsor every Sunday morning (under the big new building), and at the Samford Valley Markets on the second Saturday of each month. We'd love to meet you in person! :-)
 |  | | Our very first market stall! | A couple of months later ... |
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And our thriving stall, around Christmas! |
What a journey it has been so far! Thank you for your support as we continue to grow. Should you have any queries at all, wish to place a special order, or simply have a recommendation for our store, please feel free to contact us. We'd love to hear from you! Further, if you need any help in navigating the site, or simply don't like placing orders over the internet then, again, please feel free to contact us. We're here to be of service in any way possible!
Thank you, again, for your warm support!
Peace, Juliette, Heath, and Ethan xo
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