Mabel loves Fridays. This is the day each week she and her mum go for a treat at Miss Plum’s Sugar Plum Cafe. They love Miss Plum’s special cakes and sweets. Mabel loves the wall where locals have left drawings and pieces of art for all to see.

But one day the Cafe is gone. Closed. With no Miss Plum in sight. Mabel wonders where Miss Plum could be?

No more Fridays seeing Miss Plum’s smile, or her wonderful coloured icing on her cakes. Fridays will never be the same.

When Mum tells Mabel, a new cafe has opened, Mabel’s not sure about it. How could it possibly be as nice as Miss Plum’s Cafe? It won’t look the same, or smell the same. It won’t be the same at all.

Finally going to look for themselves, Mabel discovers that the change isn’t so terrible after all.

Many children don’t cope very well with changes in their young lives, preferring everything to be how it always was. It might be a huge change, like living circumstances or just something small (to us) like a beloved cafe closing down to be replaced by another.

Repetition is calming and known, but change can be scary. The name of a favourite cafe changes, the interior, the food and the people inside are all going to be different, and these thoughts upset main character Mabel. To her it feels like this special place to visit each week with her mum has been taken away, with no fault of her own.

Patience from her mum and courage and resilience from Mabel soon proves that everything is going to be okay after all.

A great book to approach the topic of changes, big and small, with young children.

Author – Kaye Baillie

Illustrator – Kirrili Lonergan

Picture Book

(2024, Exisle Publishing, EK Books, Cookies, Biscuits, Baking, Copings with Changes, Resilience, Friendship, Community, Local Characters)