My father and I just finished The Last Bookwanderer, the Sixth and final book of Anna James' Pages & Co. series.When
we first began, many months ago, the unspoken acknowledgement was that
neither Dad nor I expected to read the whole thing. The first book, certainly, and maybe the second,
but we never meant to read all six. Yet like the best of stories and
with a subtle grace and tug so skillful and insistent as to be
insidious, Pages & Co. grew like a tree within out, wrapping
our souls like the Midgard Serpent Jörmungandr around the world. For we
are readers, we are librarians, and this work by Anna James is a
triumphant celebration of both to the extent that it could be the mascot
of bookstores and libraries the world over. A treatise on the wonder, power, freedom, and choice that is Story and the power of imaginations; and what happens when obey the stricture “be brave, be curious, be kind.”
From Green Gables and Wonderland with Anne and Alice, Fairy Tales with Jack and Rapunzel (who does not need or want rescue). To the British and French Underlibraries to deep in Story finding a certain playwright in the Archive. To the magical train the Quip and Venice, the Emerald City and the Treehouse Library all the way to Sherwood Forest and the Jabberwock by the Tumtum tree. To Asgard, Olympus, and a London that never was. Plus many other places besides in the fight to protect their families, books and imagination from those who see power only as a means to control, as freedom as something to curtail.
May you all live happily ever after Tilly, Oskar, Alessia, Milo, Archie, Elsie, Bea, Amelia, Rosa, Artemis, and even Horatio. This is not the end, because nothing ends in Story, but Dad and I have to other books to wander into now. Until next time our brave, curious, kind and dear friends.
“Books can change minds
and change worlds, open doors and open minds, and plant seeds that can
grow into magical or even terrifying things. Stories are things to be
loved and respected at the same time; never underestimate the power of
them.”“Some
people see a bookshop as an archive, or a shrine, or even a time
machine. But I think a bookshop is like a map of the world. There are
infinite paths you can take through it and none of them are right or
wrong. Here in a bookshop we give readers landmarks to help them find
their way, but every reader has to learn to set their own compass.”
“The
books we love when we’re growing up shape us in a special way, Tilly.
The characters in the books we read help us decide who we want to be.”
“Are
the things in your imagination less real than the things in front of
you? Is this rose more real than you? Do the books you've read mean less
to you because they haven't really happened to you? Do daydreams at
midday or nightdreams at midnight mean nothing?”
“…because
stories last much longer than we do. Our stories are how we will be
remembered – so we’ve got to make sure they are worth telling.”
“You
know when you walk into a bookshop and you see all those thousands of
books lined up in front of you? That intoxicating feeling of knowing
that behind each cover is a different world to explore, like thousands
of tiny portals? That adrenaline rush just before you open a new book?
The thrill of being surrounded by fellow book lovers? That is what fuels
bookwandering, and it comes to life in bookshops.”
