The Child that Books Built

'Anyone who reads or ever read children's books - read this. It's a joy.' Irish Times

'Exhilarating.' New York Times Book Review

'Sublime.' Peter Ackroyd, The Times





What would you find if you went back and re-read your favourite books from childhood?





In The Child That Books Built Francis Spufford revisits all those childhood obsessions: fairy tales; Where the Wild Things Are; The Lord of the Rings;The Chronicles of Narnia; Little House on the Prairie; The Wind in the Willows; The Earthsea Trilogy and more. In these treasured tales Francis Spufford discovers both delight and sadness - the thrill as worlds of imagination opened up before him mixed with the memories of a boy who retreated into books when faced with a family tragedy.



Francis Spufford has written five works of non-fiction and three novels, Golden Hill, Light Perpetual and Cahokia Jazz. He has won the In 2007 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He has won the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Costa First Novel Award, the Desmond Elliot Prize and the RSL Encore Award, among many others. He teaches writing at Goldsmiths College and lives near Cambridge.