The Library of Lost Stories

LoveReading4Kids Says

November 2026 Book of the Month

Rooted in a South Wales valley community, and beautifully written by Eloise Williams, the inaugural Children’s Laureate of Wales, The Library of Lost Stories is an enchanting child-centred story of harnessing love, friendship, community and the power of stories to navigate the stormy darkness of loss and grief.   

The time and place is Aberglas in December 1976, with a sense of a South Wales community, with its chapel, chip shop, and townsfolk like the novel’s 11-year-old protagonist Rhiannon (Noni) and an older woman local children think is a witch, brilliantly evoked from the start. Observant and sensitively attuned to the world, Noni is painfully aware of how her dad is “disappearing” as a result of losing her mam, who had a laugh “like spinning coins”.

When bailiffs bang at their door, Noni decides to do something, and soon after finds a new friend in book-lover Becca. Noni confides in Becca, sharing how the 1966 Aberfan mining disaster broke her mam’s heart: “The miners tried to tell the Coal Board about it, but the rich don’t care about the poor, so they didn’t do anything”.

After finding out her parents fell in love in a library van, Noni thinks up a plan to help her dad.  

Though the road to getting the dilapidated library van back on the road is bumpy, Noni and Becca assemble a team and in time the whole community is on board. The girls even win over the “witch”, Mrs Williams, who used to be the van’s librarian, and whose wisdom is bound up with what it means to be Welsh (“We are Welsh and that makes us storytellers”), and to be a woman: “We can do anything us Welsh women.

We are part of this valley, and it is part of us. We are powerful and brilliant and magic, I think... Let me tell you something, girls. If you are a woman and you do whatever you want without minding what anyone says or thinks about it, you are branded as a witch. Not just in Wales mind. The whole world over.

If you think about it, it means that being a witch just means doing what you want, when you want and not having to answer to anyone”.  

Thanks to Noni’s narrative, the writing is reflective and utterly engaging, which makes The Library of Lost Stories likely to capture the hearts of a wide range of middle-grade-age readers. Also rich with Welsh words (such as cwtch for hug, dwt for little child, twp for daft, ych-y-fi for yuck, and, evocatively, sgrech-y-coed, screech of the trees, for jays), it explores themes of grief, loss, friendship, class, community, and the disgraceful treatment of villagers who lost loved ones in the Aberfan mining disaster with child-centred insights, amounting to a stirring story that feels like a warm Welsh cwtch of a book.

Reviewed by Joanne Owen
Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter whose lifelong love of books began when she was growing up in Pembrokeshire, Wales.
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