Imagine Tilly’s surprise then, when a character introducing herself as Anne Shirley from Green Gables wanders through the stacks to say hello. Having never met her father, and her mother disappearing when she was a baby, Pages & Co is all Tilly has ever known, but she loves books like her grandparents so it’s a life she is content with. Is this the perfect life? I certainly think so! Home for a week for school holidays, Tilly is enjoying diving into some of her favourite books, including Anne of Green Gables and Alice in Wonderland.

She has a friend who lives across the road, Oscar, above another cafe called Crumbs where she also gets delicious treats from. There’s a delightful little cafe inside the store where Jack experiments with delicious treats, and because her grandparents own the store, there is no shortage of books to read. Tilly is a young girl who lives with her grandparents above a bookshop called Pages & Co in London. It’s a book about books, my favourite kind, so it’s no surprise I loved it, but I was impressed with how engaging the story was for me as an adult – my kids will no doubt love it as soon as they are old enough to read it too. Pages & Co.: Tilly and the Bookwanderers by Anna James is the first in the Pages & Co series that was recommended to me by my boss, a fellow booklover at Calgary Reads. Although I don’t plan on making this a habit, I just adored this book so much I couldn’t help but shout about it from the rooftops, or in this case, from the screen. In the 8 years I’ve been writing ivereadthis (yes, it has been that long!), I believe this is my first review of a middle grade work of fiction, which is books written for 8-12 year olds.

Bookwanderers series