Part 1 Volume 1

This is the first volume of the Ascendance of a Bookworm Part 1 light novel adaption written by Miya Kazuki and illustrated by You Shiina and overall the first volume of the Ascendance of a Bookworm light novel adaption.

A certain college girl who's loved books ever since she was a little girl dies in an accident and is reborn in another world she knows nothing about. She is now Myne, the sickly five-year-old daughter of a poor soldier. To make things worse, the world she's been reborn in has a very low literacy rate and books mostly don't exist. She'd have to pay an enormous amount of money to buy one. Myne resolves herself: If there aren't any books, she'll just have to make them! Her goal is to become a librarian. This story begins with her quest to make books so she can live surrounded by them! Dive into this biblio-fantasy written for book lovers and bookworms!


 * Prologue (Urano POV)
 * Chapter 1: A New Life
 * Chapter 2: Exploring My Home
 * Chapter 3: Exploring the City
 * Chapter 4: Books: Unobtainable
 * Chapter 5: Lifestyle Overhaul
 * Chapter 6: Neighborhood Boys
 * Chapter 7: Paper: Unobtainable
 * Chapter 8: Learning to Respect Egyptian Culture
 * Chapter 9: Winter Preparations
 * Chapter 10: Stone Slate Get!
 * Chapter 11: Beaten by Ancient Egyptians
 * Chapter 12: The Sweet Taste of Winter
 * Chapter 13: Helping out Otto
 * Chapter 14: Tuuli's Hair Ornament
 * Chapter 15: Bring Me to the Forest
 * Chapter 16: Long Live Mesopotamian Culture
 * Chapter 17: Clay Tablets Won't Work
 * Chapter 18: Tuuli's Baptism
 * Chapter 19: I Love You, Yellow River Culture
 * Chapter 20: I Want Ink
 * Chapter 21: Intense Battle with Food
 * Chapter 22: Mokkan and a Mysterious Fever
 * Chapter 23: The Road to a Meeting
 * Chapter 24: Meeting with the Merchant
 * Epilogue (Otto POV)
 * A Day Without Myne (Lutz POV)
 * Unchanging Daily Life (Shuu POV)
 * Afterword

Urano Motosu, a book lover living in Japan, walks home with her friend Shuu while reading a book, narrowly avoiding getting run over in the process. After dropping groceries off with her mom, Urano leaves Shuu to play video games and heads to her book storage room to continue reading, only for an earthquake to cause her shelves of books to tumble on top of her.

Urano awakens in a different world inside the body of a girl called Myne, the 5 year old daughter of a soldier and a dyer. She has been reincarnated, and though she was unaware of it until now, her memories of her old life have been reawakened by her near-death experience from illness. Urano, now Myne, interacts with her family for the first time, sorts through Myne's memories, and begrudgingly accepts her new identity. However, she soon discovers that her new situation is less than spectacular, as she has gone from being a healthy adult used to the cleanliness and conveniences of modern Japan to a sick and helpless young child living with the hardship and filth of a city similar to those of medieval times.

Myne is convinced that she can survive any situation with a book, and her conviction of this sustains her though the three days after she wakes up. During these days, Myne endures situations that are normal for young children but humiliating for someone who has the memories of being an adult and barely knows their family, such as being watched while on the toilet. She also has difficulty communicating, as her new world comes with a new language, and her new memories lack many words that she knows in Japanese. The word book is among those Myne doesn't know, which prevents her from asking for any and causes the worst part of her new life: lack of books! However she also has small victories, such as getting her sister to carve her a hair stick and wipe her down every day. Myne is devastated when she finally has a chance to search the house for books herself, only to find that house lacks not only books, but written materials as well. She quickly regains her spirits after she convinces her mom to take her to the market, where she sees the world's written numbers and a book in a case, just for them to be dashed once again when she finds out that there are no book stores and books cost far more than her family can afford. Unable to imagine life without books, Myne decides that she will just have to make her own.

While Myne attempts to figure out how to get paper, she is able to make progress in the area of cleanliness. She invents “simple all-in-one-shampoo” from the oil of crushed fruits that her sister, Tuuli, brings home, and gets Tuuli and her mom to start using it with her. She also sweeps the floor and convinces her dad, Gunther, to clean the cobwebs from the ceiling. However, when Gunther forgets his lunch at home, forcing Tuuli and Myne to bring it to him at the gate, Myne's book reading plans are dealt another blow. There, she learns from Gunther that paper costs an entire month's wages, making it unlikely she could ever buy enough to make a book. Gunther's subordinate, Otto (a former traveling merchant), attempts to cheer her up by offering her to teach her letters and give her his old slate. Myne accepts, but inwardly is still determined to make books. She resolves that if she can't buy paper, she'll just have to make that herself too.

Myne settles on the idea of making faux-papyrus, and convinces Tuuli to bring her plant stems from the forest, which she plans to weave together, However, her family conscripts her for extremely important and time-consuming winter preparations, forcing her to temporarily lay aside her dream of making paper. While helping out, she teaches her mom, Effa, a technique for creating better smelling, higher-quality candles. As part of winter preparations, Myne's family attends Pig Slaughtering Day. Myne is unable to handle watching the butchering and passes out. She ends up resting at the gate, where she meets Otto again, and he gives her a slate and shows her how to write her name. Myne ends up sick from the drafty room, but is happy, and resolves to make books to make herself even happier.

During the winter, Myne finally is able to attempt to make papyrus, but as she is only able to make a tiny, poor-quality square after a lot of time and effort, she is forced to admit that her efforts are a failure. Her uncomprehending family, thinking she has just been playing around, forces her to help Tuuli make baskets. Myne is practiced at basket weaving from her time as Urano, so she accidentally displays too much skill and makes Tuuli jealous, causing her to have to come up with an excuse. Myne thinks through possible paper-making methods while weaving baskets, and decides that in the spring, she will try the Mesopotamian tactic of clay tablets.

On the first sunny winter day, Myne's family goes parue gathering. With the help of her neighbors, Lutz's and Ralph's family, Myne uses parue fruit pulp to creates a new food, Parue Cakes. As Lutz and his brothers are perpetually hungry due to being such a big family with so little food to go around, this starts an arrangement where Myne teaches them recipes in exchange for them doing work of making them, which Myne lacks the muscles to do. During one of the days of parue gathering, Myne is left at the gate again, and accidentally helps Otto with his financial mathematics work. Hesitantly, Otto asks for her help and she accepts, provided she is paid with slate pens for the slate Otto gave her earlier. Otto agrees, and also promises to teach her letters. As Tuuli's baptism is coming up in the summer, Myne also crochets her sister a hairpin, yet again introducing something her new world hasn't seen before.

When spring arrives, Myne tries to persuade her family to let her go to the forest, but they worry that her health isn't up to it. Myne negotiates with her parents, and they agree to let her go if she fulfills the requirement of being able to walk to the gate by herself. They plan for her to walk what distance she can to the gate and be carried the rest of the way there, then stay at the gate for the day to learn letters until she has built her stamina up enough. Though Myne makes very slow progress, after three months she is finally ready to go to the forest. Plan two, making clay tablets, begins. Lutz agrees to help her find clay and she begins to make clay tablets, writing a story that Effa has told her on them. However, an unfortunate misunderstanding on unruly neighbour Fey's part ends with Fey and his friends destroying the tablets. Myne loses her temper, flying into a rage that terrifies the boys. They help her remake them, but rain destroys them. After the rain passes, everyone pitches in to remake the tablets one last time, and Myne finally succeeds in making them. However, when she attempts the final step of hardening them, it ends up with the tablets exploding in the oven, causing a huge mess and she has to give up on them.

Tuuli goes to the temple to be baptized. Afterwards, she spends half of the week doing doing apprentice work, which mean Myne has to help with chores. Myne is unable to do any of them due to her health, so she is sad. However, she receives a knife so she can go gathering in the forest for food and she decides the knife is better put to use by making mokkan. Lutz finds her while she is attempting it, and agrees to help in exchange for her introducing him to Otto, as he wishes to become a traveling merchant and visit other cities. Myne is successful in making mokkan, but finds out that ink is extremely expensive, so she cleans the chimney to gather soot and makes soot pencils to write with instead. While the pencils are drying, Myne works on creating new foods. Her attempt to cook fish is a failure, but she sucessfully creates pome soup, inventing a tastier way of making soup through not throwing out the liquid the vegetables cook in in the process. She also introduces her family to salted organ meat, sake-roasted meat, and gnochi. She also arranges for the meeting with Otto to take place on his next day off.

Myne sucessfully uses her soot pencils on the mokkan, but unfortunately Effa mistakes her mokkan for firewood and burns them, causing Myne to collapse due to both illness and despair. While Myne is bedridden, Lutz brings her bamboo in an attempt to cheer her up, but Effa accidentally burns it as well. Feeling angry and full of despair over her repeatedly unsuccessful efforts to make books, Myne give up on fighting her illness and almost lets it consumes her. However, Lutz reminds her of her promise to him about the meeting, which gives her a reason to pull through. Myne visits Otto to apologize for missing the meeting, and during their conversation explains her problem with paper making in vague terms. Otto is able to offer her the solution of convincing someone to do the work of making paper for her for free instead of attempting to do it herself, and she plans to think more about the idea when she has time. Myne and Otto reschedule the meeting, and, after Myne talks about it with her parents, and they cause her to realize that the meeting will be a serious, important one somewhat like a job interview, she sets to work preparing Lutz. Myne makes Lutz bathe and use “simple all-in-one-shampoo” to improve the first impression that he will give, and helps him start to come up with a good answer as to why he wants to be a traveling merchant. Finally, the big day arrives, and they go to the meeting spot, making sure to arrive early to make a good impression. Otto unexpectedly arrives with his friend Benno, a successful merchant, and Myne is extremely glad for her extra preparations. Benno is interested in Myne's hairpin and “simple all-in-one-shampoo” but she avoids giving him any details. The interview begins, and Otto swiftly destroys Lutz's dreams of a traveling merchant, explaining that most traveling merchants dream of earning enough to buy citizenship in a town and open a store. He offers an alternative, becoming a merchant, noting that he would still get to travel to other towns to buy merchandise. Benno asks Lutz what he wants to do as a merchant, leaving him with the tough task of having to come up with reasons for being a regular merchant on the spot. Lutz is scared stiff but pulls through thanks to Myne, who offers him the opportunity to help make and then sell the things she makes, especially paper made not made from animal skins. Upon finding out they don't have any samples made, Benno rejects them, but Myne senses his hidden interest and negotiates an deal where if Lutz and Myne successfully make plant paper, Benno will hire them both as apprentices.

Characters are listed in order of appearance.


 * In the web novel the prologue occurs between Urano's death and her reincarnation in the new world, and consists of her speaking in first-person about herself and her desires. However, in the light novel, while the prologue still is written from Urano's perspective, it is in third person instead and shows Urano walking home with her friend Shuu (during which she almost gets run over) and her death by books.


 * Japanese: 2015-01-25 (ISBN: 978-4864723428)
 * English: 2019-05-20 (ISBN: 978-1718356009)
 * French: 2021-11-24 (ISBN: 978-2492139314)


 * Urano requires glasses, but Myne does not. When Urano first woke up as Myne, she thought her improved vision was due to her tears acting as lenses.


 * English Volume
 * Japanese Volume