top of page

Item List

According to Guinness World Records, ‘Remembrance of Things Past’ is the longest book in the world.

It has 9,609,000 characters, including spaces.

It was written by Marcel Proust who was from France, in 1912.

HB10PHU

- Base 10 -

We need to thank Johannes Gutenberg for the books we have today.

He invented the printing press, which prints words on to paper.

This was in 1440.

It meant that thousands of books could be produced very quickly!

HB1RSX

- Base 1 -

Take a look at your books and they will say “Illustrated by…”.

The illustrator is the person who draws all the pictures in the book.

Books don’t always have to have one illustrator, there can be multiple.

If you love art then you might like to work as an illustrator when you are older!

HB2FG4

- Base 2 -

There used to be a time where we only had books to read.

Lucky for us, we can access them in lots of different ways now.

Whether it’s online, an e-book or even an audiobook there are lots of ways to access your favourite stories.

HB3PLO

- Base 3 -

All it takes is 20 minutes a day.

If you read for this long every day for a year, then you would have read 1.8 million words.

You will be like a human dictionary!

HB4UIF

- Base 4 -

According to the Guinness World Records, the largest privately owned collection of books is a massive 1.5 million.

They are owned by John Q. Benham who lives in Indiana in the USA.

He has to keep them in lots of different places because he doesn’t have enough space in his house.

They are in the garage, in his two-storey building and even outside!

HB5DDA

- Base 5 -

It is believed that the first ever book written was ‘The Epic of Gilgamesh’.

The story was written in 2100 BCE in the cuneiform script, which is one of the oldest forms of writing.

HB6RSV

- Base 6 -

The Codex Leicester is the most expensive book in the world.

You’re not going to believe how much it sold for…

The science book sold for 30.8 million dollars in 1994.

It was Leonardo da Vinci’s science diary!

HB7TTJ

- Base 7 -

Have you ever wondered how many books have been published?

Although it’s impossible for us to come up with an exact number, according to Google, they believe it is around 130 million books!

All those books definitely won’t be fitting on the book shelf.

HB8QYB

- Base 8 -

The Bible is sold all over the world, which makes it the most sold book there is!

At an estimate, there are 5 billion printed copies of it around the world.

HB9WUD

- Base 9

bottom of page