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Bookworm

Bookworm

A Memoir of Childhood Reading

Summary

A love letter to the joys of childhood reading from Wonderland to Narnia.

When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one.


She was whisked away to Narnia - and Kirrin Island - and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. With Charlotte's Web she discovered Death and with Judy Blume it was Boys. 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.

In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with wit, love and gratitude. She relives our best-beloved books, their extraordinary creators, and looks at the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. She also disinters a few forgotten treasures to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way.

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.

'Passionate, witty, informed, and gloriously opinionated' Jacqueline Wilson author of The Story of Tracy Beaker

Reviews

  • THE most wonderful, funny, clever, charming, evocative book.
    India Knight

About the author

Lucy Mangan

Lucy Mangan is the TV critic for The Guardian, and a columnist, features writer and reviewer for Stylist magazine, The Telegraph and many other publications. She broadcasts frequently on radio and occasionally on television, and is the author of Bookworm, My Family and Other Disasters, The Reluctant Bride, Hopscotch and Handbags and Inside Charlie’s Chocolate Factory.
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