The Borrower

Item: The Borrower
Author: WhichBook

Rebecca Makkai

This is an inspirational and entertaining story, with the narrator Lucy, a children's librarian, unexpectedly taking 10-year-old runaway Ian on a roadtrip. This is very much a journey of discovery for both, dealing with themes of relationships and belonging, interspered with funny moments and observations, in many cases with reference to books. It shows how much stories and the people who love them can make a difference to a person's life.

Extract

Lying in bed that night, I thought what a wonderful children's book that would make: a library haunted by friendly old librarians .... And perhaps it was what I would do myself, after they shot me, or after I died of grief. I'd float and sneak and haunt, dropping clues like snowflakes. When children came to hide, I'd put them under a spell so they could crawl inside the picture books. If the cops or reporters or pastors came searching, I'd jump out of my little puppet theater, ghostly fingers twitching, and scare them all away.

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