Bookworm

Book #19 Read in 2019 Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan Mangan discusses the important role books and reading played in her childhood and talks about favorite reads. She talks about books and the love of reading and this book will be a great gift for book lovers.

Full review now posted! Children’s fiction, especially children’s classics, will always be incredibly special to me. Books have been foundational for me since I was born. I slept curled around books instead of dolls or teddy bears, and I stared at pages desperately trying to understand how the squiggles on them were words. I memorized the stories my parents read to me, matching the words with the pictures on the pages well enough to convince them that I had already learned to read when I was three, at least until they saw me “reading” a book upside down. By the time I was four, I could read pretty well and whole new worlds were opened for me. I read at school, hiding a book under my desk and hoping that my teacher wouldn’t noticed. (They usually noticed. But since I always did my work first, they feigned ignorance.) I read on the playground, hidden behind a tree. I read in bed and in the bathtub and at the dinner table when I could manage it. I read up trees and under bushes and in closets, by sunlight and lamplight and moonlight. So when I saw this book’s subtitle, “A Memoir of Childhood Reading,” I instantly related. I could tell just looking at the cover that the author was a woman who had also hoarded books and time in their pages like a dragon hoards gold. We are kindred spirits, this author and I. We might not always share the same exact taste in books, but we have a lot of crossover books that meant the world to both of us. A Wrinkle in Time, Narnia, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, The Phantom Tollbooth, The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, Matilda, The BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Borrowers, The Hobbit, Anne of Green Gables, and Charlotte’s Web are all children’s stories that I have loved which were mentioned in this book. But there were also a lot of books mentioned that I had never even heard of, which of course means I’ll have to track them down. However, I wouldn’t recommend this book unless you are a passionate bookworm and have been such since shortly after your birth. There were portions that would read very dense to those who don’t have a deep and abiding love for children’s literature, but which I found fascinating. Mangan not only told readers what books had impacted her and why, but how those same books had shaped a genre. She gave a history of children’s fiction in print, including the origin of certain awards like the Newbery and the Caldecott that still hold so much sway in the genre. Like I said, I found this fascinating. But unless you’re incredibly passionate about the children’s fiction genre I’m not sure how much appeal it will hold for you. If you happen to know someone getting a Masters degree in Children’s Literature, this would make an amazing graduation gift!