Book

By: John Agard

Narrated by: Dion Graham

Length: 1 hr and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Books contain countless tales - but what if Book told its own story? From clay tablets to e-readers, here is a quirky, kid-friendly look at the book.

Books are one of humankind's greatest forms of expression, and now Book, in a witty, idiosyncratic voice, tells us the inside story. A wonderfully eccentric character with strong opinions and a poetic turn of phrase, Book tells of a journey from papyrus scrolls to medieval manuscripts to printed paper and beyond - pondering, along the way, many bookish things, including the evolution of the alphabet, the library (known to Egyptians as "the healing place of the soul"), and even book burning. Book is a captivating work of nonfiction by one of England's leading poets.

“There is no frigate like a book” appears in The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, ed., Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951, © 1955, 1979, 1983 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. “Book-heart” reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd., London, on behalf of Grace Nichols; copyright © 2006 by Grace Nichols. “The burning of books” originally published in German in 1939 as “Die Bücherverbrennung.” Copyright © 2014 by Thomas Mark Kuhn and David J. Constantine. Copyright 1939 by Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag, from Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Thomas Mark Kuhn and David J. Constantine. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation. Malorie Blackman quotation copyright © by Malorie Blackman. As published in The Author (Autumn 2011), reproduced by permission.

©2014 John Agard, first U.S. edition published by Candlewick Press (P)2015 Brilliance Audio, all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"Dion Graham nails the narration of Agard's loving tribute to books and their history.... Graham has the style of a storyteller with a myriad of tools at his disposal, including a rich voice, variations in tempo, and volume changes, all used to make information clear and emotions palpable. Listeners of all ages will come away with a deeper appreciation of books." (AudioFile)