Mary Edward's story about Milly Molly Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley

The book that changed my life was the first one I read - so I can take it from there.
Throughout a career in education, a mantra frequently repeated was that the child who grows up in a home without books is never destined to become a reader. Every time I heard it, I thought - and often said, 'Not necessarily true.'
The early part of my life was spent in a home with no books - a mother, a grandmother, an auntie and a cousin, but no books.
Then I started school - Rutland Crescent Primary. In retrospect, I must have been a gift for the teacher in that deprived area of Glasgow, when I bounced in, desperate to learn to read and achieving it very quickly. So, the next step was to join the library - a breath-holding affair of proof of identity and rate-paying entitlement on the part of the significant adult. But at last I was the owner of a ticket - a little oblong of cardboard - a golden key to the dizzying riches of words on paper. I ran all the way to the library that first day and took out Milly Molly Mandy. I ran all the way home and read it, then ran all the way back and returned it to take out another.
A cursory glance at Amazon.co.uk demonstrates that MMM has never lost her charm or halted her prolific adventures - she is still there - in books, cds, boxed sets, an omnibus - hardcover or paperback - 'More of...' and 'Further Doings of...' an exhaustive list for a little heroine of fiction who changed the life of a wee girl in war-time Glasgow. There was rationing, bombs not too far away, absent fathers - and no money. But there was Milly Molly Mandy to take me into a different world - a world which I have inhabited ever since that first exciting day when I ran all the way to Kinning Park Library. Now I drive to my local library - but the magic has diminished not one iota.