Montgomery and Frances Hodgson Burnett were somehow completely overlooked as a child as well as an adult reading to my own children! How did I miss these?! In particular, Anne of Green Gables now holds a very special place in my heart and I’m grateful to have not missed this gem, even if I did get to it rather late in life. Then there were other children’s books that I missed the first and second time around and only came to know and love as an adult. Others I came to know through reading to my own children – Eric Carle, Maurice Sendak, Dr. White were all writers I adored as a child. Lewis, Judy Blume, Louisa May Alcott, and E.B. My own adventures with reading don’t match Mangan’s perfectly, although there are some overlaps for sure. That is exactly what I found myself doing as I read this one. But more than that, it is a book that will cause any bookworm that has adored reading since the days of diapers and bottles to reflect on his or her own experiences with books. This is a wonderfully nostalgic memoir of author Lucy Mangan’s childhood reading life. I read wherever I could, whenever I could, for as long as I could.' 'I read omnivorously but not well and certainly without a thought for posterity.

I read wherever I could, whenever I could, for as long as I could.' This is a wonderfully nostalgic memoir of author Lucy Mangan’s childhood reading life. Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life – prompting endless re-readings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate – and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm.more She also disinters a few forgotten treasures to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way. She relives our best-beloved books, their extraordinary creators, and looks at the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with wit, love and gratitude. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library or to spend her pocket money on amassing her own at home. With Charlotte’s Web she discovered Death and with Judy Blume it was Boys.

She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She was whisked away to Narnia – and Kirrin Island – and Wonderland. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one. When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and play

Bookworm books