Our (Last) Trip to the Market, illustrated by Mitch Vane

Our (Last) Trip to the Market

As in… we’re never going again if you kids don’t cut that out right now. A story about the joys of going to the market and undertaking the kind of adventures that teeter on the brink of catastrophe right until everyone’s buckled up in the car… or are they?

Published by Allen & Unwin. Illustrated by the incredible Mitch Vane.

Published in 2017, Our (Last) Trip to the Market was inspired by the time I went to Ceres, in Melbourne, where there was a fresh food market with bulk beans and lentils and nuts and all that good stuff. I had left my own kids at home and was thinking how wonderful it would be to bring them to this place of wholesome goodness when I heard a mother hiss to her child, “Get your hands out of the lentils, Serenity”. It reminded me how different the experience of a child at a market is from the experience of an adult.

The incredible Mitch Vane did these delightful illustrations and Susannah and the team at Allen & Unwin published it. It was an ABIA Most Notable Book and is now out of print, so your best bet is a library, or a second hand shop, or someone getting rid of things by the roomful on Facebook Marketplace. Thanks to all the small people for whom it was a favourite!