Image of the Vintage Children's Classics edition of The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett

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Extracts

Lucy Mangan: Why The Secret Garden is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s masterpiece

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Features

Lucy Mangan’s best Christmas scenes in literature

Lucy Mangan: 4 best children's books for grown-ups

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Reading lists

Lucy Mangan: 4 best children’s books for grown-ups

A Memoir of Childhood Reading

Bookworm

A love-letter to children’s books. 'Beautiful and moving... It will kickstart a cascade of nostalgia for countless people' Marian Keyes

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

THE most wonderful, funny, clever, charming, evocative book.

A book for people who love books, by a person who loves books. Bookworms unite (or just sit in our separate corners and read!)

A delicously nostalgic treat that will make you want to pull out all those old favourites again

Artfully evokes that particular magic of reading as a child… Deliciously unrepentant, Mangan’s Bookworm makes a timely case not just for how vital reading is, but also for rereading books as a child, and how reading remains consoling, fortifying and, sometimes, magical.

A wonderful romp through the pages of childhood, illuminated by wisdom, humour and enthusiasm.

What Mangan does brilliantly is express the experience of reading and articulate the emotional connections we make with stories. She understands how books become entwined in our lives and help us make sense of the world. You don’t need to have enjoyed the same books as she has to recognise the pure, life-affirming joy of reading that Bookworm celebrates so eloquently.

Lucy Mangan has enough comic energy to power the National Grid... We need this new memoir about her childhood of being a bookworm. It's enchanting.

To read Lucy Mangan’s memoir of growing up bookish is to be taken back to a time in life when reading wasn’t merely a gentle pleasure or mild obligation but an activity as essential as breathing.

Anyone who has ever preferred books to life will recognise Lucy Mangan as a kindred spirit. Her moving, funny, honest and superbly-written memoir about how childhood reading shapes our personalities, memories and chances could not be more timely or more needed in an age of library closures, embattled Humanities teaching and Philistinism.

Lucy Mangan's passionate, amusing and nostalgic reflection upon her favourite children’s books deserves to become as much of a classic as the novels she revisits.

A witty and thorough history of reading for children from the 17th century to the present day. Fiercely unsentimental and often funny, it's a memoir that will strike a ringing chord with anyone who spent most of their childhood glued to a book.

Deft, warm and beautifully balanced. Made me smile. Made me glow. Made me think again and again.

Jason Hazeley, co-author of the adult Ladybird series

Funny, nostalgic and super-interesting… Warm, witty and a must-read for every bookworm.

The Guardian columnist has composed an enthusiastic love letter to childhood reading, and the classic books that have shaped many young lives, as well as providing a resource and guide on how to build a children’s library

Bookworm is for anyone who longed to be on Kirrin Island with the Famous Five, slip through a back of a wardrobe into Narnia or will always think fondly of the penis named Ralph in Judy Blume’s Forever

A warm, witty story about stories and the way they shape us.

Lucy Mangan’s passionate, amusing and nostalgic reflection upon her favourite children’s books deserves to become as much of a classic as the novels she revisits.

Entertaining and hugely engaging… An entirely inspiring read.

… like a heated but enjoyable discussion with a best friend bookworm.

A love letter to the books we all read as children.

[W]ise and witty… all the time Mangan has the ability to be ceaselessly and apparently effortlessly funny

If you're a book lover of any form then you will almost certainly get something from this book… you will look fondly back on the books of your childhood too

In Lucy Mangan’s Bookworm…childhood books are brought vividly to life, as are the remembered pleasures of first encountering them

Lucy Mangan's funny, warm Bookworm is personal and universal in the way that the very best books are

Beautifully narrated, Bookworm brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story

Lucy Mangan is a columnist for Guardian Weekend magazine and Stylist, and the author of My Family and Other Disasters, The Reluctant Bride and Hopscotch and Handbags.

'Beautiful and moving... It will kickstart a cascade of nostalgia for countless people' Marian Keyes 
 
When Lucy Mangan was little, stories were everything. They opened up different worlds and cast new light on 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. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library. 
 
In Bookworm, Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life and disinters a few forgotten treasures poignantly, wittily using them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm. 
 
'Passionate, witty, informed, and gloriously opinionated' Jacqueline Wilson

Lucy Mangan

An affectionate, warm guide on the healing power of reading.

Comforting, funny and moving - Bookish is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad.

A bookworm’s delight. A joyous whistle stop tour through some books I’ve loved all my life as well as books I discovered through reading it. I devoured this book.

Lucy Mangan on books is like butter on toast: perfect.

Such a gorgeous writer… Funny, warm and charming… A beautiful, warm, comic voice. If you’re a passionate reader, this book feels like the best conversation ever with another of your kind. I was engaged, comforted, educated (about SO much). I laughed, and wanted to be part of your family, and made lists of all the books I need to buy, and was very moved.

What Mangan does brilliantly is express the experience of reading and articulate the emotional connections we make with stories. She understands how books become entwined in our lives and help us make sense of the world.

An unabashed paean to the pleasure of acquiring more books than you could ever possibly read in your life… a whirlwind tour through her [Mangan’s] voracious, encyclopedic adult reading habit… This is a book by someone whom reading is life

Bookish… tackles the myriad complexities of adulthood…[Mangan] makes for a wonderfully incisive critic and can pick apart a George Orwell with the same perspicacity with which she can, say, a Jack Reacher, or the lesser-known Brontë sister, Anne

Readers won’t share all of Mangan’s preferences, but that’s part of the point – it’s enjoyable enough to eavesdrop on the pleasures of a committed bookworm… A book on books needs marginalia, and this one doesn’t disappoint

Brimful of recommendations, packed with insights and sprinkled with wry observations, Bookish is a delight

A Love Letter to Reading

‘A bookworm’s delight’ Sara Collins 
‘Funny, warm and charming’ Marian Keyes 
‘Like butter on toast: perfect’ Caitlin Moran 
 
A love letter to all those who come alive when they pull a new treasure off the shelf, stay up late reading just one more page and pack their suitcases with clothes wedged between books instead of the other way around. 
 
From well-worn literary classics to steamy bonkbusters, gripping thrillers, young adult novels and other not-so-guilty pleasures Bookish brims with literary insights, wry observations and stellar recommendations. This is an ode to the bookish places – from local libraries to bookshops big and small – and the stories that make us who we are. 
 
‘Comforting, funny and moving – Bookish is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad’ Sali Hughes 
‘An affectionate, warm guide on the healing power of reading’ i News 
‘Mangan makes for a wonderfully incisive critic and can pick apart a George Orwell with the same perspicacity with which she can, say, a Jack Reacher’ Observer 
 
READER’S LOVE BOOKISH 
 
A perfect read for all of us under the spellbinding influence of books! 
I found myself laughing at her wit and nodding in agreement at the books she loves 
Perfect book for bookworms and you’ll feel as if you've found your tribe. 
This is a book which will fill every bookworm's heart with joy! 
A perfect read for all of us under the spellbinding influence of books! 
Would again make a perfect gift for any bookish bookworm 
If you love books – and I mean really, really, love them, you should buy this book. 
I have never felt more seen.

Lucy Mangan

Praise for Bookish

An affectionate, warm guide on the healing power of reading.

Comforting, funny and moving - Bookish is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad.

A bookworm’s delight. A joyous whistle stop tour through some books I’ve loved all my life as well as books I discovered through reading it. I devoured this book.

An affectionate, warm guide on the healing power of reading.

Comforting, funny and moving - Bookish is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad.

A bookworm’s delight. A joyous whistle stop tour through some books I’ve loved all my life as well as books I discovered through reading it. I devoured this book.

An affectionate, warm guide on the healing power of reading.

Comforting, funny and moving - Bookish is wonderful to curl up with on good days and bad.

A bookworm’s delight. A joyous whistle stop tour through some books I’ve loved all my life as well as books I discovered through reading it. I devoured this book.

Books by Lucy Mangan

Articles featuring Lucy Mangan

Lucy Mangan: Why The Secret Garden is Frances Hodgson Burnett’s masterpiece

Lucy Mangan’s best Christmas scenes in literature

Lucy Mangan: 4 best children’s books for grown-ups

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