Michel Tremblay takes the reader on a tour of the books that have had a formative influence on the birth and early development of his creative imagination. As in the other two volumes in "the education of Michel Tremblay": his memoir of the formative films in his life, Bambi and Me (winner of the Govenor General's Award for translation); and his first encounters with the world of theatre, Twelve Opening Acts (nominated for the Govenor General's Award for translation); Birth of a Bookworm is first and foremost a love story of Michel for his muses, ushered into his life and hovered over with the acute care and concern of his match-making mother. As in all of Tremblay's work, the physical and emotional world of his childhood is celebrated as the fertile ground on which his new, vivid way of seeing and imagining is built.