Most anyone who visits Paris and loves to shop will be told to visit the storied flea market — “marché aux puces” in French — which occupies five acres in Saint-Ouen, just north of the city limits. The problem, many visitors find, is that it’s impenetrable.

“There are a lot of visitors who walk through and leave empty-handed and baffled,” said Kate van den Boogert, 51. “It’s very big and covers a lot of ground and it’s easy to feel like you don’t know where you are.”

Ms. van den Boogert’s new book, “The Paris Flea Market,” is less of a guidebook and more of a celebration of the culture, history and oddball treasures of the market, which has existed in some form since the 19th century.

In the book, she writes, “The puces asks you to upturn typical perfection, eccentricity over good taste, mystery over rationality, one-off and handmade over factory-made, yesterday over tomorrow, mess over order, and poetry over business.”

Ms. van den Boogert, who lives a 12-minute bike ride away from the market in the 18th arrondissement in Paris, said in a phone interview that the genesis of the project was in her 2020 book “Makers Paris,” about artisans and shopkeepers in the city. “Many of them spoke about the importance of the puces,” she said.