Imagine you're sitting in the library with your best friend. "Did you see that bookworm?" says your friend. "What worm?" you ask. What is your friend talking about? All you see is a girl with her nose deep in a book. You start to wonder if bookworm is a worm or not. I decided to find out myself. It turns out that it's a worm and a person. Now it that sounds wacky but it's true. Let me tell you how.
When you first hear the word "bookworm" you may think a worm that eats books. Well you would be right, there is a worm like that. It is a worm sometimes known as a booklouse or paper louse. These are tiny worms just under 1 mm with soft-bodies. These worms feed on microscopic molds and other organic matter found in ill-maintained works of literature. These books are usually in cool, damp, dark, and undisturbed areas such as archives, libraries, and museums. They will also attack bindings and other book parts. Just imagine going to the library and finding an old book and finding a worm on it eating the pages. That's a literal book eating worm.
There is another bookworm that devours books. It could be the person next to you, the teacher, even you. Now when I say "devours books" I mean figuratively. Take me for example. Every night I read till my eyes can no longer stay open, take a trip to a library at least every week, talk about my books when I can, and I even have my own book club. If you are a bookworm try to embrace it. It's not a bad thing to love books. That's the passion of a bookworm.
Now you can see why it's not so hard to see why they would call people who read lots of books a bookworm. Because like the literal bookworm we consume the books, just in a different way. When a paper louse eats a book it is eating for sustenance. When a figurative bookworm "eats" or reads a book they are consuming for knowledge or entertainment. But whether for sustenance, knowledge, or entertainment, it's still good to be a bookworm. The next time you look around you will see that the world has too many bookworms to even count and that's cool.
Now you know what a bookworm is. If it's a worm you better get a shoe or a jar ready, you also should get your book repaired. If the bookworm that you have come in contact with is a person, make sure you have a book topic ready to discuss. Watch out, the next time you go to a library you may find some bookworm lurking in and about the books.