ALL THIS AND A BOOKSHOP TOO
Dorothy Butler – Penguin Books - $40

This new autobiography was launched last evening in the Study Hall in the old original hall at Auckland Girls' Grammar School and Bookman Beattie had the great privilege of speaking to the more than 100 guests who packed into the splendid 100 year old room which was originally the school's assembly hall.
Penguin editor Dorothy Vinicombe introduced Liz Thomson, AGGS Principal who welcomed everyone and spoke of how proud the school was of their distinguished "old girl" Dorothy Butler.
Then it was The Bookman's turn and my address (most of it anyway) is reproduced below. Pic right above shows Dorothy with The Bookman.



Launch address:
Dorothy Butler, OBE, BA, Dip Ed, to which can be added the Eleanor Farjeon Award, the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award, the Children’s Literature Assoc Award, the inaugural Margaret Mahy Award, and Distinguished Alumna of Auckland University – have I left anything out Dorothy?
Dorothy Butler is a remarkable woman, and she has written a remarkable book.

The book is several things:
It is of course the second volume of Dorothy’s autobiography, but more than that in the telling of her story it becomes the delightful and entertaining history of the whole Butler whanau.
Dorothy & Roy, their courtship and marriage, their siblings, their years of tertiary training, their purchase of land in rural Birkenhead, their first home, a tent, Dorothy's teaching here at this school, their eight children born over a space of 13 years, and later their 25 grandchildren.
What a family. A diverse and variously talented bunch, not surprisingly all sharing a love of books and reading.

Which leads me into the second major strand of Dorothy’s book – it is in effect a history of the development of children’s bookselling and book publishing in New Zealand.
Because she played such a key role in these developments from the mid-60’s through to the mid-90’s she is able to look back on those years and describe them to us in a highly readable and engrossing manner – the people she knew and worked with in the Playcentre movement, in the founding of the Children’s Literature Association, in the creation of her own bookselling business first from her home, then from the Sunny brae Road shop, and finally the Ponsonby shop at Three Lamps Corner, and of course with her writing. The list reads like a who’s who of the NZ children’s book world through that time:
Tom Fitzgibbon, Joan Brockett, Betty Gilderdale, Frances Plumpton, Jo Noble, Kay Callan, Elizabeth Miller, Barbara Moore, Joy Cowley, Margaret Mahy, Ruth Corrin, Ray Richards, Noeline Alcorn, Joan de Hamel, Gaelyn Gordon, Ronda & David Armitage, Judy Corballis, Roland Griffiths, Neil Robinson, Helen & Alan du Pree, Gwen Gawith, David Mackie, Lyn Kreigler – one could go on but these names will serve to illustrate my point.

And while running the bookshop, and with Roy raising a large family, she somehow managed to write and edit a number of major books – Babies Need Books, Reading Begins at Home (with Dame Marie Clay), Cushla & Her Books, The Magpies Said, Children Books and Families, then later went on to write some 30 children’s books.

As her fame and recognition spread around the country and around the world she travelled extensively to receive various honours and also because she was in high demand as a speaker and as a book judge and critic. For one who came to travel later in life than most she sure made up for that with frequent travel to the UK, US, Australia and Japan becoming commonplace.
Not to mention trips to Canada, the Bologna Book Fair & other places.
And of course she met so many people of note from within the international children’s book scene – Elaine Moss, Shirley Hughes, Kaye Webb, Margaret Meek, Aidan & Nancy Chambers, Edward Blishen, Judy Taylor, Alan Ahlberg, Charlotte Zolotow, Pat Hutchins and many others too numerous to mention.

So this book is an autobiography, and a fine one at that, but it is also an important social history of the NZ children’s bookworld over a period of some 30 years.
I found it utterly compelling and I offer Dorothy my congratulations on a wonderful publication. She has let us inside her large and special family, she has shared with us her happinesses and her sorrows, and she has been as frank and forthright as those of us who know her would expect.

Just on a personal note I must say that I was intrigued to read of her efforts when she first came to bookselling, working out of the family home, at traipsing around all over Auckland and further north to put on book displays at Playcentre and Kindergarten meetings at which she would extol to parents the value of reading aloud to young children from an earliest age.
Her entry into the bookselling world in Auckland largely coincided with mine in Hawkes Bay and I well remember the frequent nights I spent away from home travelling from Wairoa in the north to Dannevirke in the south, and even up the old Taihape Rd, addressing the same sort of groups, often annual general meetings, that she was speaking to in the north, and no doubt preaching the same sort of gospel.
It didn’t, as she says in the book, pay its way, but I must say it was among the most personally satisfying things I have ever done. And I know that was Dorothy's experience too.

Then when I came to Auckland to join Penguin Books in 1977 the very first thing my boss, Patrick Wright, said to me was go down to Sunnybrae Road and say hello to Dorothy Butler.
I already knew her of course because I had been to Auckland previously to address the Children’s Literature Association, and it is pleasing to recognize a number of Dorothy's fellow stalwarts from that organization here tonight – Joan Brocket, Betty Gilderdale, Jo Noble, Judy Keestra and Frances Plumpton among them.

The book is littered with delightful anecdotes, among them the story of a young woman turning up one day clutching a manuscript and asking Dorothy to read it, the woman was Tessa Duder and that manuscript was later pubished as Night Race to Kawau, and Tessa has gone on to become one of our best-loved children's authors. Another story tells of son-in-law Steve Yeoman turning up one day at Karekare with another fellow in tow, both totally drenched and looking something like drowned rats! The other fellow was Melvyn Bragg of South Bank Show fame.They had been caught in a storm while tramping. Dorothy plied them with cups of tea and cake.
It is a marvellous book, enchanting and affecting, and I warmly recommend it to all.