Not a systematic discussion of children’s literature, but a charming idiosyncratic and very personal memoir of the books the author grew up with. Witty, nostalgia-arousing. It probably isn't the author's fault that there weren't more books in translation available when she was growing up.

Anyone familiar with Lucy Mangan's writing for the Guardian will be familiar with her open and entertaining technique. This memoir perhaps reveals the root of her love for the written word. She describes how visceral immersion in the works of children's authors like Enid Blyton and Frances Hodgson Burnett created an addiction, satisfied by repeated library visits and pocket-money devouring trips to W H Smith. This is set in a background of Thatcherite division and cut-backs which threatened education and attitudes that had nurtured a literate population. Ultimately it reminds us of the pleasure to be found in losing ourselves in well thumbed pages of familiar stories, and the lingering power of children's fiction which existed before the coming of the great Harry Potter.

An utterly lovely read. Anyone who was a childhood bookworm, or became one as an adult, will find much to enjoy, and all written with Mangan's trademark gentle wit.

I considered myself a pretty dedicated bookworm until reading this. Lucy Mangan has an insane amount of books: ‘I was once interviewed by a man from a book collecting magazine because he refused to believe that I had 10,000 books in my house.’ Yes, 10,000 (!!!) – I cannot claim near any such numbers, but I did relate to so many of Lucy’s reading memories, making this a delight. If having a good old chat with someone about the books they enjoyed reading as a child sounds like a pretty good way to while away the hours over a glass (bottle) of red wine, then you need to pick this up.

This type of book will, of course, get you thinking about your own childhood reading. There is something so lovely about reading as a child, when you don’t have to try and squeeze it into your day (hello, commute reading), Lucy perfectly captures this: ‘But let us relive, for the next few chapters at least, a little of those glorious days when reading was the thing and life was only a minor inconvenience.’

However, I also had a bittersweet feeling. Like Lucy, I’ve been a bookworm since I was tiny and I have memories of going with mum to the upper floor of my local WH Smith to buy the latest in The Babysitters Club series. This was followed by a devotion to Roald Dahl, Sweet Valley High and the Point Horror/Romance collections. In primary school I borrowed every Enid Blyton book from the library to the point where the librarian told me I had to intersperse different authors every other borrow – I didn’t know why at the time, but Lucy gives me clarity, ‘(Blyton) was a one woman mass production line, turning out workmanlike units that perfectly serve a particular need at a particular time in a child’s life, not finely wrought pieces of art.’

Yes, I have these memories but sadly (due to house moves through the years) not the books any longer. I also don’t have a recollection of the books that were read to me as a small child, so I got major pangs of jealousy when Lucy describes having even her first bookcase, as well as the books that she read as a toddler. It’s not so bad though, I still have a few books from then and Bookworm has inspired me to keep my sons’ books I read to them now, so that they’ll always have them. Lucy talks about hoping her son becomes a fellow bookworm – same for me. My toddler is addicted to reading The Gruffalo again and again, so there’s hope!

Along with the autobiographical element, there are wonderful little insights into the lives of the authors she mentions, adding depth to their own stories and a historical context to the books.

I adored Bookworm for giving me an enchanting trip down memory lane, some passages felt like I was reading about myself like when she mentions she didn’t actually read Alice in Wonderland until she was an adult, but knew the story so well, she assumed she had read it as a child – same for me! She also includes this great tit-bit: ‘Alan Bennett’s famous definition of a classic – a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.’ Bookworm has an effortless, conversational style making it a pleasure to read. It really did feel like having a chat with a bookish friend about books we had both loved (Sweet Valley High, Roald Dahl) and childhood classics I haven’t yet read (Goodnight Mister Tom, The Phantom Tollboth) that I now really want to read to my sons. It also has a very handy list of every book she mentions at the back, so I can get cracking on filling in those childhood reading gaps.

I adore Lucy Mangan’s writing and this book indicates exactly why. A brilliantly written and relatable book PERFECT for bookworms everywhere!

This was a tough one to review. As a lifelong bookworm myself, – who could disagree with Lucy’s assertion – “the bookworm’s prime directive: any book is better than no book”, I was keen to read her story. Unfortunately, having read almost none of the books she considers about, it turns out that a mutual love of reading isn’t entertaining in of itself.

I was already familiar with Lucy’s sharp and sassy observations on daily life from her Guardian column, with a baby called Buggerlugs and a husband known as Toryboy, and there is plenty of humour in this book. Her parents and sister play major roles, her father depicted with great affection, a key figure in both stimulating and supporting her reading habit. Her family provide plenty of comedic material; her mother – “gynaecologist, cleaner, laundrywoman, scorched earth gardener” who “if she ever has an unexpressed thought, she’ll die” and sister – “a born manager of others”, although once past the half way mark the references sometimes become a little too familiar

The affection and regard she has for the books she encountered as a child shines out, and each book she critiques is accompanied with some historical back story as well as the circumstances in which she read it and the impact it had on her. There are heroes and villains – “The Cat In The Hat can take his anapaestic archery and bugger off” puts Theodor Geisel in his place while she admits she took “Adventuring With Brindle” out of the library so many times she was eventually banned from borrowing it again – “I wept”. She adores “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory” although admits Dahl’s work now seems more brutal than she recalls as a child – but acknowledges that that may be down to motherhood and her driving desire to keep her child safe “rather than allow him any quality of life at all”. And was furious when she realized that C.S. Lewis used “The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe” as a covert way of promoting his faith.

There’s some engaging discussion of the wider importance of reading that resonated with me. Re-reading books as a child – something I did a lot and is often frowned upon by adults (particularly nonreaders) as a waste of precious time – allows a child to progress from decoding and understanding the words, to engaging in the plot and getting lost in the story. “The beauty of a book is that it remains the same for as long as you need it” and indeed “you can’t wear its patience out”. Couldn’t agree more.

She points out the whist Enid Blyton (one of the few authors we both read) may have been a mass producer of formulaic template based books (760 over 50 years), which resulted in many of them being excluded by 1930’s BBC and many libraries, there was nothing wrong with providing post war children with consistent reliable “comfort reading”. And of Blyton’s racism – the “most egregious examples of racism have been quietly removed”, an acceptable form of censorship.
She admits that Buggerlugs (a,k.a. Alexander) isn’t showing the same bookwormish inclinations as yet, but it’s evident she’s optimistic. And we get a hint of what the left wing bien-pensant Mangan sees in husband Toryboy when she mentions the latter has a complete collection of Ladybird “History “and “How To” books.

All in all this isn’t a bad book – in fact it’s well written and argued, and very funny in places. It’s just not my childhood reading story. There’s a full memoir in Lucy’s childhood if she cares to tackle it. I’ll but it.

Do you love books? Are you a bookworm? Do your childhood memories revolve around books you loved as a child rather than family holidays? I know I can barely remember being in Fuerteventura as a child with my family, but I remember the three books I read when I was there, if you answered yes to any of those questions, you need to pick up this book.

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.

This book was so cute.
I have been wanting to read more non fiction for a while so when I spotted this on Netgalley it was pretty obvious I had to give it a go, this is one of the cutest books I’ve read for a long time. Lucy takes us on a journey through her childhood and the books that marked and shaped her. So many of the books she read are ones that I read, so many of my experiences of growing up as a bookworm were related in these pages, I very much enjoyed hearing about how Lucy devoured the Worst Witch and the Secret Garden and how her tastes in books changed as she matured.
There were a few moments where this began to drag, especially in the sections explaining the history of various authors and their works, but overall this was a really sweet and interesting read, I don’t know about you, but I love hearing about the books that other people grew up with and enjoyed, so this was a really interesting memoir!

This was one of those rare and wonderful books about which I had the vague feeling might actually have been written with me in mind.  I followed journalist and author Lucy Mangan's Children's Book Corner column in the Guardian years ago, so it was with delight that I discovered that she had written a whole book on the topic.  Tracing from her babyhood to the present day ('For the true bookworm, life doesn't really begin until you get hold of your first book'), in Bookworm, Mangan both relives her own life in books while also providing a running commentary on the history of children's literature.  Somehow Mangan has always seemed to understand that being a Bookworm is more than a mere hobby, but rather a way of being, a lifestyle and even at times borderline social handicap.  Nostalgic, restorative, reassuring, this warm-hearted and witty memoir celebrates all that is wonderful about childhood reading.

As Mangan recalls 'hiding a book on your lap to get yourself through breakfast' and 'getting hit on the head by footballs in the playground because a game had sprung up around you while you were off in Cair Paravel', I found myself nodding along in vehement agreement, but when she asked 'Was your first crush on Dickon instead of Johnny Depp?' I actually cheered aloud - I really thought that one had been just me.  Being a bookworm can often seem a solitary occupation, but in Bookworm, Mangan illustrates how books have the power to unify us as few other experiences can.  Mangan describes reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar to her young son alongside 'the ghost of [her] toddler self and the spirit of [her] thirtysomething dad in a shared delight'.  Books cross continents, class divides and generations - reading truly is an incredibly portable brand of magic.

There is something very particular too about childhood reading.  Bookworm harks back to that Golden era where life barely intruded on reading time.  Reading really was like oxygen, to be gulped down greedily whenever five spare minutes arose.  A recurrent morning problem for me growing up was my tendency to get caught up in what I was reading when I was supposed to be getting dressed or brushing my teeth, leading to serious recriminations when I was not ready for school at the agreed upon time.  Then there was the panic about making sure I had enough books to make it through an entire school day - I negotiated it down to no more than four in my school-bag.  Just in case of emergencies.  Yet, while some of these habits remain with me to this day - I can still be delayed out the door in the morning if the drama is at a crux point, I rarely travel without at least two books and a Kindle - the ability to fully immerse within a fictional world is not the same as it was during childhood.  While reading, my childhood self became quite literally deaf to the world - the teacher could call my name as often as she liked, the doorbell could ring, I knew and cared nothing about it.  Adult me has lost that ability and reading Bookworm, I felt nostalgic for the experience.

Despite the decade or so difference in age, Mangan and I appear to have crossed over surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?) closely in our childhood reading.  Like her, I am a huge fan of Judith Kerr from The Tiger Who Came To Tea through to When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and despite not being hugely fond of cats, I do rather adore Mog.  Many other old friends also make appearances over the course of the memoir - Shirley Hughes, Maurice Sendak, Quentin Blake, Raymond Briggs, the list goes on and on, even including some of the more obscure titles such as Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House, a book I loved but which nobody I have ever met has read.  Again like Mangan however, I too never could take to Barbar the Elephant but yet, as Mangan points out 'the bookworm's prime directive: any book is better than no book.  Always.'  I remember reading a Barbar book in that exact spirit - it was all that was available at the time.

Bookworm made me realise again that gaining the ability to read gives you power over your own life.  We recognise and applaud this in terms of social mobility and education, but I had not considered it in terms of growing up.  Being transported by a book is the first independent travel I ever made.  Mangan contemplates reading on both the physical side (more shared happy memories as she recalls BBC's Look and Learn with Wordy and the Magic E) and the horror of arriving at school and realising that you have to interact with confusing children all day rather than being able to mind your business at home with your books.  As Mangan describes, unlike with the Hungry Caterpillar, there will be no magical transformation - 'it's bookworm, not bookbutterfly'.  At least you have the books to grant some form of padding against life's early traumas.

Of course, not every book can be recalled with fond and fuzzy nostalgia.  Returning to bygone beloved books now as a parent, Mangan expresses wry amusement at the lack of 'satisfactory narrative resolution' within the Mr Men books and a certain discomfort with some of Roald Dahl's sadism.  Yet, despite her clear disappointment at revisiting Enid Blyton and discovering her practically unreadable, I admired Mangan's dedicated defence of Blyton's place in the canon.  I am in the bracket of children banned from Blyton, less from ideological reasons as much as the fact that my mother felt she had missed out on good books in her own childhood by reading Blyton and didn't want the mistake perpetuated.  Although I did read Malory Towers, I don't have strong associations with her myself but I can see how for many, Blyton was 'the gateway drug' on the bookworm journey.  It's just that for me, I think it was Noel Streatfeild.

There is so much more to Bookworm though than one woman's retrospective on her reading.  Mangan explores how reading promotes empathy, with the example of how her own repeated reads of The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark helped her as a non-nocturnal-phobe to understand why others might be afraid of this.  Quoting philosopher and psychologist Riccardo Manzotti, she describes how reading and rereading gives us 'both locks and the keys with which to open them'.  Mangan considers how re-reading deepens the relationship with a story, with the area of life which the story relates to and ultimately an improved understanding of yourself too.  The child who reads becomes the adult who thinks.

Of particular interest to me was Mangan's frequent mentions of encountering and appropriating unfamiliar vocabulary through reading.  She notes astutely one of the wonderful elements of Richmal Crompton's Just William stories is the fact that they make use of interesting vocabulary which makes no attempt to dumb itself down for its readers.  During my time as a teacher, I was often shocked by how limited the vocabulary of my pupils could be (oddly, when I taught a class where English was predominantly the second language, their vocabulary tended to be better) but more than that, the way in which the drive was to pander to this rather than target it was quite astonishing.  I suggested a topic on Bill Naughton's fantastic story Seventeen Oranges and although we did do it, colleagues insisted on using the simplified version re-written for non-English speakers rather than the original.  Yet, vocabulary deficiency is recognised as a major education barrier for children of all ages.  If a seven year-old child is being protected from a simple story about stolen oranges, the notion that we can be surprised a few years later when they struggle to read an exam paper is ridiculous.  Bluntly, you need to get your kids reading and you need to allow them to run into the occasional unusual word when they do.

What is interesting is how many of these 'classics' which Mangan loved in the 1970s and which I loved with equal fervour in the 1990s were written decades and decades before either of us were born.  Even The Family From One End Street (which has a special place in my heart as I read it with my grandmother), celebrated by Mangan as the first ever book to depict working-class children as heroes, was published way back in 1937.  Yet when I look in the children's section Waterstone's now, I see shelf upon shelf of Captain Underpants and generic Young Adult franchises.  If I want the books that I loved, I seem to have to go digging.  Is this again the urge to 'protect' from material that is too challenging?  I'm not dismissing newer releases - I know how much former pupils enjoyed David Walliams, Horrid Henry and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, I just wonder a little about where some of the others have gone.

I suppose another issue may be the rise of the term 'problematic'.  Mangan rolls her eyes at a parent who mentioned that she would not be buying her children any of the Narnia books because of the 'Christianity in them'.  Never mind that they are lovely and funny stories with fantastic characters (Reepicheep!  Puddleglum!  The DLF!) but the idea that a child just might pick up on an allegory means that they are to be considered off-limits.  And like Mangan, a lot of that escaped me anyway when I was reading it for the first time.  Even a recent explanation of how Prince Caspian was a metaphor was brand new information for me as at the time I just liked the story.  Your child is not going to be brainwashed by Christianity by reading Narnia.  Just let them get on with it.  Little House on the Prairie is another series that seems to be at risk from being branded 'problematic'.  When I was little, attempts to lend out our copies to friends were met with failure because the death of Willy the pig proved too traumatic (personally, I found it unpleasant but not exactly scarring) but these days the focus is on the depictions of race and land acquisition.  I would agree that these areas do prompt discussion.  But what's wrong with that?  Again, it's a lock and a key to understanding that these issues exist in the world.  I will never agree that shutting a book away and pretending it did not exist is the right way of handling a contentious message.

There is something very particular about the passionate defense you can feel about the books you loved in childhood - I can feel seriously riled if I hear someone express disdain for Prairie or Streatfeild or indeed any of the many, many, many books that I galloped through as a child, turned back to the beginning and then galloped through yet again.  Mangan relates her belated discovery of Roger Lancelyn Green's accounts of mythology and the melancholic feeling that although they are wonderful, she has arrived at them too late for them to form part of her identity in the way that the books she read at the time did.  I sympathised as I actually did read several of Green's Greek mythology books and not only did his retelling of the night of Hercules' conception bring up confusing feelings, but I was reusing the names from The Luck of Troy in my own story-writing for the next four years.

Skipping across the classics, Mangan gives potted histories around various of their publication alongside her personal recollections.  I skipped Alice in Wonderland as a child and feel quite firmly that it is Too Late Now but appreciate how significant is within the canon as a whole.  I did read most of the canon of Frances Hodgson Burnett however and it was reassuring to not only hear from another fan but also someone who thought that bun scene in A Little Princess was perhaps a bit 'much'.  It's strange, a few years ago we were picking films to watch and a friend of a friend explained at great length how A Little Princess was her all-time favourite film, she had watched it dozens of times, was obsessed with it still as an adult and then was utterly astonished to discover it had also been a book.  The bookworm in me was horrified.  That being said, I think that The Secret Garden is both a better book and a better film (1992 version).

It is likely obvious by now that I read Bookworm making copious notes and having numerous moments of rapturous recognition (Mangan thought that What Katy Did At School was the best Katy book? Me too!  Thought Starlight Barking was the most bonkers sequel you've ever read in your life? Me too!  Devastated by the ending of Charlotte's Web?  Me too!  Reading Goodnight Mister Tom changed you for life?  Me too!) but it would take too long to list every single one here.  What was particularly poignant though was reflecting again about this chapter in my life with the distance of adulthood.  I am in the slow process of reacquiring my childhood books from my parents' garage and attic, something which has prompted some re-evaluation over which books are worth carrying forward and which need to take the trip to the charity shop.  More than that though, there's the painful lesson that no matter what I would wish, one cannot force a book on another person.

Growing up, I used to spent huge amounts of time trying to pick out books that I thought my cousins would enjoy.  They never read them.  The fault was not with them, but with my own inability to realise that not everyone is a bookworm-in-waiting.  It's the classic gift-giving trap - don't give someone something just because you think it's worth having.  This counts double when it comes to reading.  Just because I think a book is worthy or unworthy has no bearing on whether someone else will enjoy it.  I do think this is something I am getting better at - I have even bit my tongue when a reluctant reader told me proudly how much he had enjoyed The Boy in Striped Pyjamas even though that is a book which offends me on every level.  As Mangan points out, being a good bookworm does not make you necessarily a good reader - what do I know about what another person will enjoy?  The joy of being a childhood bookworm is that you are set free to roam an imaginary landscape at your will.  My own mother bought me many books, read to me and funded many of my own later purchases and reading is a big part of our relationship (I bought her a copy of this book for Mother's Day this year), but I was also allowed (most of the time) to make my own choices and it is important that all children have the same opportunity.

As Mangan points out, while being a bookworm may make social interaction more confusing, it gives back a heck of a lot more than it takes.  While at primary school, I was frequently taken out of class to show visitors what exactly I was reading, something which I found confusing until I became a teacher and realised how much of an oddity I must have been.  Reading really does please teachers.  It also does grant a facility with language that makes coursework and exams are an awful lot easier, not to mention writing covering letters in later life.  My own dear grandmother never had a great deal of faith in the English education system but she did concede that given that I had read a lot, I was at least 'trained for something.'  Reading Bookworm filled me with such joy in revisiting so many of my early favourites but whereas other writers might have been satisfied with a nostalgic countdown of books they loved, Mangan has instead provided a battle cry for reading itself.  Bookworm is a book to contemplate, treasure and revisit, to remind oneself that to be a bookworm is a gift and to look on each new book as an adventure.  More than that, when we return to the books we loved as children, we are as close as we ever can be to our own past selves - for the bookworm, is this not the most magical thing of all?

Such an absolute delight to read! As an ardent bibliophile since I was young enough to hold a book, this could have been written for me. Mangan weaves together childhood memories of her life and, more imprtantly, her reading alongside a mini history or childrens literature. Reading this is like having a hug, it's cosy and nostalgic and completely had me hooked from the beginning.
As Mangan is (very slightly!) older than me, I found i wasn't familiar with all of the books that she discussed, but am looking forward to tracking several of them down under the guise of wanting to read them with my own children, and I'm happy to say that she has thoughtfully provided a list of books at the end, hurray!
For any other long-term avid readers out there that may still be on the fence about picking this up i say just get it! It's warm and wonderful and full of stories and deliciously wordy! I'm already very much looking forward to a reread.

Thanks to Random House, UK, Vintage Publishing and NetGalley for my review copy of this book.

A lovely, sweet step back in time, particularly if you are indeed a "bookworm" and from Lucy's generation.

I have long been a fan of Lucy Mangan's writing and was looking forward to a memoir on my favourite childhood pastime, albeit with a touch of trepidation. Would it live up to my expectations? Thankfully it surpassed them! I love Mangan's prose and her wit and warmth made me want to re-read every childhood book I'd ever laid my hands on (and those books which were included that I hadn't had a chance to read). If you grew up in an age before books could be delivered same day or downloaded in seconds and lost hours in your favourite stories you will love this book.

In this unique memoir, Lucy Mangan takes the reader through her childhood, book by book. The worry, for me, was that reading about what someone else had read might be similar to hearing about someone else’s dream, but Mangan’s descriptions are vivid and her anecdotes are interesting, and there were very few instances where I lost interest in her reading journey.

Early on, I was delighted to discover alignments with my own childhood – a northern, Coronation Street-watching family, a mother who says you don’t need a drink with soup because soup is a drink as well as food (I tease my own mother about this on a very regular basis and have never heard anyone else say it). And my favourite parts of the book were where Mangan’s reading experiences chimed with my own – The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Judy Blume.

Mangan’s memoir brought out my nostalgic side and made me want to track down certain books to read to my own children. Like Mangan, I was and am a bookworm, and I hope that my children will be, too. The oldest (four) is showing signs, and I’m keeping everything crossed.

You will like this book if you are a reader at heart. How much you will like it will depend on how many of the books Lucy Mangan talks about you have actually read. Since what you read as a child will be determined to a great extent by your culture, it's clear that British readers will enjoy this more than others. Even if you don't know some of these books, you can still enjoy the way she talks about the process of reading and the way in which only children can be immersed in and fascinated by the world of a book. Enid Blyton, Noel Streatfeild, Michelle Magorian. If you recognize these names and they bring back memories, this would be a book for you.

This is more of a memoir than anything else and although i ma grateful to net galley for the chance to read a proof copy of this book I found it a slow boring read in many places. I think it would depend on whether your reading history was similar to that of Lucy - if it was you could Oh yes i thought that - but overall it might have been better as a conversation or author interview than a book of remembered reads. Many of the books I had not read indeed some I hadn't even heard of. As I progressed though the book I found myself wondering how one dimensional Lucy was as a child ing and felt that she was perhaps reading because it was there without experiencing the things that the books portrayed. Think of the imagination and adventure in books such as The Narnia series, What Katy did or the Just William stories yet Lucy reads them as if merely completion is the object. Whether right or not i ended up feeling very sorry for Lucy and this added to my disenchantment with the book. I am not sure that by reading this ooh i would feel all fired up to read the books she describes nor do i believe i would feel inclined to read any more by this author

Full of reading nostalgia, a brilliant book on the joy of reading- it was in fact a joy to read!

I enjoyed reading this, perhaps mostly because Mangan appears to have had a more extreme version of my own bookish childhood! There were a lot of old friends revisited here, along with a few that I missed. I agree wholeheartedly with her stance on Tolkein and the addictive properties of Sweet Valley High. My own childhood reading featured a few less classics, more adventure stories, lot more school stories and a lot more American kids fiction, but I came away thinking that I’d like to talk children’s books with Mangan over a glass of wine - so a win overall!

This is a must-read for any former child-bibliophile.

Lucy Mangan is an individual I had never heard of before reading this book but one who feels like a long-time friend, now I have finished it. This is a memoir, of sorts, chronicling Lucy's toddling, childhood, and teenage years. She uses books to mark the passage of years, which alter with the growing vocabulary and her her burgeoning love for the written word.

I found myself reminiscing about so many of my own childhood favourites, whilst reading this. I, too, shared a love for The Very Hungry Caterpillar and an excitable distrust of tigers who turn up unannounced to tea. I found myself captivated by the freedom experienced by Enid Blyton's protagonists and enchanted by a sojourn in a chocolate factory with Roald Dahl. My unbounded joy at finding my previous favourite books made this feel like Mangan was relaying my own life story, rather than recounting her own.

Mangan expertly summarised what it was about so many of these still beloved authors that made them so enchanting to little ones. She encapsulates both first joys and latter nostalgia, as well as giving facts about the authors lives and the book creations themselves. This book felt like a warm embrace. It provided so many forgotten favourites, that made me cast a loving eye back to my young reading self and reminisce about afternoons lost amongst the pages of many a book.

My only reason for not awarding this a full five stars is due to my not having read every book collected here. This was obviously unavoidable by the author but I, nevertheless, could not get the same enjoyment out of the latter third, when I recognised so few titles from my own early reading years.

Mangan takes us along on a nostalgic chronological tour through the books she loved most as a child and adolescent. No matter how much or how little of your early reading overlaps with hers (a lot of mine did), you’ll appreciate her picture of the intensity of children’s relationship with books – they can completely shut out the world and devour their favorite stories over and over, almost living inside them, they love and believe in them so much – and her tongue-in-cheek responses to them upon rereading them decades later. I was familiar with Mangan’s funny, cheeky style from her journalism (she has had columns in the Guardian and Stylist) and one of her previous memoirs, so I knew what I was getting into and wasn’t disappointed. She doesn’t mention her family often, but when she does she infuses their caricatures with just enough warmth to feel like real people.

The author and I differ in a few key ways – I loved the Anne of Green Gables series and anthropomorphic animal stories like Watership Down, while she didn’t much appreciate Montgomery’s books and avoided animal books entirely – but I can forgive her these blind spots because she’s written such a delightful paean to the joys of being a lifelong reader. The bibliomemoir’s usual failures of too much plot summary and spoilers plus self-indulgent choices are less evident here than in many, and there are so many witty lines that it doesn’t really matter whether you give a fig about the particular titles she discusses or not. Highly recommended to bibliophiles and parents trying to make bookworms out of their children.

This was, quite simply, the perfect book for me. I am a bookworm. I say that proudly with my head held high whenever it isn't between the pages of a book! This is Lucy Mangan's trip through her childhood books. Conveniently she appears to be only a couple of years younger than myself so it was also a trip through my childhood books. A book full of nostalgia but also pride in belonging to the clan "Bookworm".
The author takes us from her very earliest memories (The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Babar the Elephant etc) and through the early books of Milly Molly Mandy and the Worst Witch. We skip through 2 years of Enid Blyton - why did she name them the Five Finder-Outers - not vastly original! We also pop into the classics - I had forgotten the love of a The Secret Garden and onwards into what are now called young adult. There is a slight deviance into pony books - which I had totally forgotten I had read and a surprising lurch into the Sweet Valley High books at the end.
It was bliss to remember my old childhood friends that were shared by the author. I also enjoyed remembering the books that the author appeared to have bypassed - No Moomins or Paddington and Dr Doolittle and Mary Poppins didn't make an appearance. The author is not a fantasy lover so never discovered the wonders of The Wizard of Earthsea. My own love of the Alfred Hitchcock & Nancy Drew detective books seem to have been untouched by the author.
It wasn't only the books though. It was everything that went with it. The Library - the haven of many a bookworm both at school and in town. The curling up with a book whilst other girls grew up into an incomprehensible world surrounding boys and parties. The lack of understanding by so many but the glorious understanding by the few.
The book itself is well written with humour and light hearted moments as well as the shattering insight into how hard life could be for those who didn't quite fit in.
For me this is the ideal book. I loved it for itself as well as for the memories of my old friends the books of my childhood.
I received a free copy of this book via Netgalley