My mum and dad have been travelling in Germany and captured these great photos of the stands for ‘Pixi books’ (Pixi-Bücher). Pixi books have been published in German since 1954, and have a similar status to the English-language Golden Books. The format for these books are 10 centimetre square paperbacks, and these days they sell for 99 eurocents. The books are produced in series of eight and are numbered – the series now numbers over 1,700!
There is (of course) a ‘Friends of Pixi-books’ website which chronicles the mammoth undertaking of cataloguing all the books – with images! More lovely images of vintage Pixi books on Daddytypes and Munichblues.
Most of all I love these stands… what an inviting bowl for a little person to dip into and a great way to signpost a bookshop…
||Reviews of some of Lou and my favourite Golden Books can be found here, here and here.||
There is no doubt that the Pixi ‘stand’ is eye-catching – at least it is to a visitor. Now in Paris, one of the things that amazed me about Berlin was not only the number of bookshops (full-stop) but the number of specialist children’s bookshops. There must be something special that books and bookshops say about a culture!
The apartment we are staying in in Paris is very close to Notre Dame – it is classy and VERY small but (?) significantly there are lots of small nooks crammed full with books – above the front door; on sideboards AND the toilet recess is lined with books!
Looking forward to hearing the review of the two children’s bookshops in Berlin…