Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading (Unabridged‪)‬

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 left the house only 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 and 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 rereadings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate - and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born and unrepentant bookworm.

Cover credit: Laura Barrett