Book description
Fairy tales and Where the Wild Things Are, The Lord of the Rings
and the Narnia books, Little House on the Prairie and The Earthsea
Trilogy. What would you find if you went back and re-read your
favourite books from childhood? Francis Spufford discovers both
delight and sadness, in this widely celebrated memoir of a boy who
retreats into books, faced with a tragedy in his family. 'A
beautifully composed and wholly original memoir, sounding the classics
of children's literature.' David Sexton, Evening Standard 'Exuberant
and serious, funny and sophisticated, this memoir of reading and
childhood is a delight.' Andrea Ashworth
Francis Spufford, a former Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
(1997), has edited two acclaimed literary anthologies and a collection
of essays about the history of technology. His first book, I May Be
Some Time, won the Writers' Guild Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of
1996, the Banff Mountain Book Prize and a Somerset Maugham Award. His
second, The Child That Books Built, gave Neil Gaiman 'the peculiar
feeling that there was now a book I didn't need to write'. His third,
Backroom Boys, was called 'as nearly perfect as makes no difference'
by the Daily Telegraph and was shortlisted for the Aventis Prize. In
2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He
teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.
