Along with all the leisurely walks, coffee drinking and baby holding, I also got to visit some amazing book stores while in Montréal. The first, this one above is the Drawn and Quarterly store. I had a mild heart attack when I saw how close it was to my sister’s house (around the corner!). I love comics and graphic novels and this publisher has some of the best. I spent a couple of very happy hours in there and came away with these:

I bought Tove Jansson’s “Who will comfort Toffle?” mostly for myself, but Sosi also loves it. It is so gorgeously illustrated and made, I could go back to it over and over and always find something new.

The story is so sweet and heartfelt.

I want to frame each page and hang them on our walls. I’ve wanted to get Sosi into the Moomin comics and thought these colourful picturebooks would be a good start. I was right, she loves them.

While there I also picked Guy Delisle’s “Pyongyang” for myself and devoured it. It was such an amazing look into the mundaneness of living in a part of the world which we know so little about. It was fascinating. I’d love to read more of Guy Delisle’s books.

I also got to some lovely French bookstores to look for books to bring back for the girls. Ila loved this one I brought back for her. It has furry-bits and flaps and monkeys… all the makings of a perfect book in her opinion.

I wanted to find some really fun French books for Sosi, who is in French immersion. I saw this and once I started looking through it I couldn’t put it down.

I grew up watching Barbapapa and all the happy memories flooded back looking at these pages.

I think this is Sosi’s favourite gift that I brought back for her,

she is completely captivated.

It even ends with a pop-up page, all books should end with a pop-up page!

You can find all sorts of wonderful Barbapapa books at the Renault-Bray site. They even do free shipping on orders over 39$. I know I’ll be ordering more!