 Hello to everyone here. To everyone watching this in libraries in Manchester, Wakefield and Sheffield, my name's Mary Safefield West, I'm a producer at the BBC, and a campaign manager for Love to Read. A campaign which is all about the pleasures of reading. So what better place to share people's recommendations than here at the British Library. I hope that over the last couple of weeks you've managed to watch or listen to some of the programmes that have gone out across the BBC. ac yn y pwyllgor, dwi'n gwneud y gweithio'r llyfrnod yn y Gwylodau Llyfrgellol. Llyfrgellol yn y cymdeithas sy'n cael ei gwneud y maen nhw i ymddangos y rhai a'r gweithio'r llyfrnod yn gweithio'r llyfrnod sy'n cymdeithio'r llyfrnod a'r llyfrnod. Mae'r llyfrnod yn cresendol ar y dyma, ac mae'n amlwg ymddangos yma i'r llyfrnodau llyfrnod yn gwneud. Felly, mae'r bys yn gynllun i llai o'r llwordaeth i gael y tîm ymddangos, ac rwy'n ddod i'n dweud i gael y Llyfr. Rwy'n ddod i'n gweithio bod hi'n gweithio i'r llwyddoeddion i ddod i gael eu llwyddoeddion yma. A rwy'n gweithio i'r llwyddoeddion i'r llwyddoeddion i'r Cllemynsie Burton Hill. Mi'n fath awdurdod i'r Maerian. Felly, rwy'n gweithio i chi'n gweithio i'r llwyddoeddion. Galileo,who was quite a clever man and had quite a big brain knewy thing or two, saw reading as a way of attaining human,superhuman even powers. Half a millennium later,his modern counterpart, Carl Sagan, stole books as proof that humans are capable of working magic. Marcel Proustin, meanwhile,said that what was to be particularly celebrated was the irrこと univerisal pleasure of childhood reading. Ydyn ni'n llawer i hyn broses yr adrodd maelodau ar gyfer ymlaes cofiad hwn yw'r blaen. A'r hynny'n mynd i gefnogaeth am gaelarol i'r adrodd o mesur o adrodd yn cwilwyr,翰 i bwysig y gallwn i'r ceisio'r panel fydd yw i ddweud yma chipsol yn ysgolio'r plesや nesaf fwrddol ar gyfer y teimlo i'r blaenol sy'n mynd i'n cael ei blygol ac mae'n gweithredu a hynny'n ystod o ffadig wedi'i ei tufyn. So we're going to be talking about the books that made them, that shaped their own childhoods, that inspired them to write for children and young people, and also the books that still loom large in their adult lives. We'll be talking for about 40 to 45 minutes, and then after that there will be time for questions, and we would love to hear from you, particularly, there are so many young people in the audience, we'd love to hear your thoughts, so get your questions, get your thinking caps on, and you can put your questions to any member of our wonderful panel. Charlie Higson started off as a writer and performer on shows like Saturday Live, and The Fast Show, now a novelist, best known for his phenomenally successful Young Bond books, and his Enemy series, which is set in a dystopian future, where everyone over 14 has either been killed or brain crazed, leaving the children to fend for themselves. Bally Rye writes books inspired by his Punjabi and Sikh background, but he's always been passionate about the idea of writing for everyone, irrespective of background. He knew from a young age that he wanted to be a writer, that is, if he wasn't going to be a footballer for Liverpool, and he's written a vast number of books, more than 30, I believe, for all ages, from his soccer series to his ultimate teenage book guide. Most recently he published the dark psychological thriller Web of Darkness, and I have to say that being a little bit scared of the internet and all things online, I read it and it was absolutely terrified. So, in a good way, of course. Chris Riddle, who's next to me, is our current children's laureate, as I'm sure you all know. He is a prolific writer and illustrator. He started off as a cartoonist at The Economist. He's still very busy in that regard. He will be making sketches all the way through the panel. Is that right, Chris? Well, I was going to, Clemencey, but the visualiser wouldn't work. So, you'll just have to imagine... ..that he bears this opening way. I did sharpen my pencil. He'd sharpen his pencils and it was a thing of wonder to watch him doing so. So, he, of course, as you probably all know, is best known for his Goth Girl series. I was in Scotland, Clemencey. I just want to say this very quickly. I was asked how I pronounced my name. I said, I said Riddell. And the Scottish headmaster said, nonsense, you're in Scotland now, it's Riddle. You can't get it wrong. I was obviously... Listen, I was channeling my inner Scott. So, Chris Riddle slash Riddle. What a Riddle, his surname is, is best known for Goth Girl and Otterline. I was first introduced to Otterline by my nieces, Ella Deane Carris, who are obsessed. Every year, with World Book Day, they go as Otterline. They will be making sure that I have a pen ready for Chris to be signing books afterwards, and I should say that now they are all going to be signing books afterwards. It's very exciting indeed. And last, but not least, the wonderful Meg Roesof. She became a publishing sensation with her first novel, How I Live Now, which won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. Her second novel, Just in Case, went on to win the Carnegie Medal. And this year, she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for a very prestigious prize indeed. Whose previous recipients include Philip Pullman, no less. So, a very warm welcome to you all. We're going to start with the books that made you want to write for children. And Chris Riddle, I think I'll start with you if it's all right, as you're on my left. This one really rang bells for me. I've got a two and a half year old who's obsessed rather gratifyingly with books. And he's currently really into where the wild things are, which is the book that you say made you want to write for kids. Why was that? Right. Okay. I'll try and keep this brief. I went to a wonderful school. It's a very, very lovely school. It considered art as a remedial subject. A waste of a qualification. Sounds like 2016. It's quite interesting. We come full circle. Disapproved of my leaning towards art, certainly with the school authorities. I thought this was belligerent behaviour. I rather enjoyed that sense of rebellion. I discovered I could go to art school having applied to university. I discovered this because back in the day we were given money to go to educational establishments. They were called grants. These are amazing things. And so I went to my local art school and said, could I come along to art school? And they said, do you have a grant? I said yes. They said, come along. So I went to art school. It was fantastic. But I won the English prize at my school. The last year I was there. And so they asked me back to collect the prize. And I thought, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to choose a book that will make my headmaster just a little bit embarrassed about his policy towards all things artistic. I thought I would choose where the wild things are, my favourite, favourite picture book. In fact, the seminal picture book. The picture book that sort of invented the modern picture book. And I just wanted the image of my headmaster on stage in front of lots of people reading out my name. I would come up and you would give me where the wild things are. And I'd be able to walk off with all my sort of artistic street cred. And so the great day came. My name was read out. I went up. There was my headmaster. He handed me Gibbons, Decline and Falls of the Red Hat. Which I sort of dusted from the library, you know. And I took it off thinking, oh dear. And I wasn't enough of a rebel. I just immediately accepted it and walked off. And then my lovely art master met me outside the hall as I came off stage and he took Gibbons, Decline and Falls and he gave me where the wild things are. So for me that was my artistic sort of, you know, birth. That was, you know, I thought right now I'm ready to go to art school and do this sort of work. Do the morasendag work. So was it the pictures or was it the story? What was it about that work? It was everything. I think with where the wild things are it's a perfect story structure. So you begin quietly with Max doing something that he shouldn't be doing, banished to his room. And then slowly as you go through the pictures, the pictures expand until this marvellous rumpus right in the middle where the wild rumpus begins. And then it starts to contract again as he comes back to his room. And it's got this wonderful, wonderful last line about sort of, you know, his supper is still waiting for you. And it was still warm. And this is lovely for you. It's just a perfect book to share at bedtime when you're reading. It's just, it's got that whole sort of maybe journey into sleep. It's a beautiful thing. It certainly is. I'm sure everyone in this room is familiar with where the wild things are. Bailey, tell us about the book that you were inspired or inspired you to write for children. The one that inspired me to actually do the writing. Yeah, what book was it that made you think I also want to write for this audience? It was primarily for me because I've written most, my average character age is about 15. So the one that I picked was Junk by Melvin Burgess simply because it was the one that, I didn't think I could write what I wanted to write in the, this is back in 1999, 1998, in the children's market because I was still stuck in the 1980s when I was a teenager and there wasn't really very much YA or sort of gritty teen stuff. And my agent just said here, read this. I thought, what's this? And she went, it's really good. So I started reading it and I was a bit shocked. I was a bit sort of like, this is in school libraries. And she's like, yeah, I was like, I wish it had been in my school library because I come from a background with no cultural reading. My family didn't read. None of my friends read, you know, whatever background they were. To this day, most of my friends, some of them are quite proud of the fact they don't read and I was always a little bit different. I always read, always wanted to be a writer. So and because I wanted to write about these lives and what Mallory Blackman famously said on her, not just Mallory, but she said it within British way, the idea of unheard voices that we don't really get represented in literature. I wanted to represent those. So Junk was a kind of way out. It was sort of like, oh my God, if he can do it, I can do it. Mallory Blackman said this was the book that also made her want to write for teenagers. So what is it about that book and people who might not be familiar with it? What's it about? It's a love affair. It's a love affair between a couple called Tar and Gemma. But it's also a love affair. It's about their love affair with each other, but it's a love triangle. Unfortunately for them, the third part of that triangle is heroin addiction. So it's a very gritty, very hard hitting story. And it touches on quite a lot of kind of dark subject matter. But the way that he draws the characters, Tar and Gemma, it's such a warm touch. They're not cardboard cutouts. He's not moralising. He's not sort of telling you that you should think these young people are evil or wrong. He's just exploring the mistakes they make that they do separately and then they come together and they continue to make those mistakes. And has that approach been very influential for you as a writer? Absolutely. It's this idea that we can touch on what is termed British social realism, but for younger audiences, for teenage audiences, and maybe bring a slightly different angle to what have traditionally for me always been children's books without knowing about the teenage market and then becoming involved in reading all these great writers, modern-day writers who are writing this fantastic stuff and me having a niche within that to explore the things that I want to. The niche that you identified early on in your career as a writer, which was there wasn't much, especially in the Asian, reflecting on your Asian background for young adults, do you find that now there's more? Do you feel like you really blazed a trail? No, if I'm going to be honest. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Which one that I haven't blazed a trail? No, is it good that this is still your niche? Or would you have expected there to be more? I didn't want to be placed in the niche. The niche kind of automatically happened. I said from the start, my first book is called Unarranged Marriage, but it's for anybody. It's a story about Leicester, which is, I know we're sitting in London, but Leicester is the only city in the UK that officially has no ethnic majority, so it's very, very multicultural. My friends come from so many different backgrounds that when I wrote that book, I wasn't writing about the Asian character or for I was writing for anybody that wanted to read it. It was just a way to talk about the multicultural communities in Britain that were being either really badly spoken of and thought of or just completely ignored, and I wanted to be able to do that. So, for me, being able to do that was a massive thing, being able to explore. I've done events with Valley in one extraordinary event in Leicester, and it is the power of the story, and this is what books can do. It is about voices, isn't it? But also, it transports you. It's empathic, isn't it? We did this wonderful event with an audience I wouldn't normally see, and I was talking about fancy novels, and you were talking about your novels, and yet they were met with exactly the same interest, weren't they? Yeah, there's no... That engagement. The readers I'm talking about, some of them tend not to be readers, but become readers because of a specific book, and it's not as simple as you take somebody from an Asian background on the lonely reader book about Asian people, and that makes them readers, but if that's what happens, great. But the readers essentially will read anything that they enjoy. They're not bothered. The young readers particularly don't care what background the characters come from. They just want a great story. So my idea, or in my head, I was just writing great stories. The niche part of it really had nothing to do with me. I just write for British people that want to read stories about British teenagers. Or just for humans who have a heart and an acceptive imagination. There is that. It's quite hard to get across to people sometimes. I did that yesterday in a school in Birmingham. They said, who do you write for? I went, humans. These year nines looking at me like this. Humans, what do you mean? You, people like you. Just people, humans. We'll talk in a little while about that idea that somehow there are certain books that children should read or shouldn't read. But for the moment, we'll go to you, Meg. Hard to imagine a more different scene of a junk on gritty modern streets. Yes, I'm going to lower it. A dillic world of the pony. I'm going to lower the tone, usually. I mean, I've read madly, madly, madly when I was a kid. But I always, I grew up in the suburbs and what I really wanted more than anything else was a pony. And of course, you're not going to get a pony in the suburbs, especially if you're like from a nice Jewish family, you know. Your mama, dad, yeah, what I want for Christmas. We don't even celebrate Christmas. You're not getting a pony for Christmas. But I read every single pony book ever written and then I ran out. And this caused me real heartache, actually. And I had to move on to other kinds of books. But I never forgot the kind of misery of running out of pony books. So I didn't start writing until I was really late. And I knew I couldn't write a proper book. So I thought, ah, I've read so many pony books that I can definitely write a pony book. Because there's only two pony book plots in the world. And I'm really, really bad at plot. I've always been bad at plot, but I'm even worse now. And I did feel that if I could steal a plot and nobody would notice that I could probably write a book. And if there's only two plots and pony books, one is the Jim Conner. And somehow there's the good girl and the bad girl and the bad girl as the great horse and the good girl who's really sincere and somehow she wins the Jim Conner. And the other one, which is remarkably similar, is the rich girl and the poor girl. And then there's always the Jim Conner. And the rich girl has the fabulous horse and the poor girl doesn't. And the poor girl ends up with the fabulous horse and wins the Jim Conner. And I thought, well, it can't be that hard to do it. So I thought, OK, I know there's a big hole in the market. I'm going to write a pony book. And I wrote the one about the rich girl and the poor girl. And I sent it. I asked everyone I knew if they knew an agent. And I sent it off to an agent. And the agent called me back and said, I think you can write, but I don't think I can publish a pony book with quite so much sex in it. And the problem was I was trying to write like a really normal pony book. But there's a point in every pony book. And if anybody here has ever read one, you know that point where the girl's father hires a trainer for the girl. And what they always do is they go down the road. Down the road there's an old guy, a bit grizzled. He walks with a limp. And it turns out that the limp is from a terrible accident when he was a racing jockey or a show jumper. Can we get back to the sex? We're getting back there. And then the old guy comes out of retirement limping and he trains the girl. But I thought I was going to be creative, which just goes to show you should never, ever go try to be creative. And so for some reason I had the father go to Paris to bring a trainer back. He didn't go down the road to get the old guy. He brought back this really good looking 25-year-old guy to be the girl's trainer when they didn't get along. And there was all this tension and then one night it was dark and in the barn and the sexual tension suddenly turned to lust. So then I wrote this sex scene and I thought, great. And I went to bed. And then I woke up the next morning and I thought, hang on a sec, I've written a pony book with a sex scene between a 25-year-old Parisian show jumper and a 15-year-old girl. So I kind of then had to follow the story, which meant that this, of course, was against the law. So the police were called in and then the girl was pregnant and then it led to an abortion. And the plot kind of got away from me and there were like hundreds of pages with no ponies in it. And then at the end there was the Gymkhana and they all lived happily ever after. So it was kind of a disaster of a book but I've since had lots of people begging me to publish it. So stay tuned. I was going to say, I think from the reaction, we can safely say that there's at least a roomful of people that want to read this book. So that's it. It's got to happen. Yeah, so it was never published. It was never published but it's still there. I mean, yeah, available by private subscription. Charlie, your book that made you want to write for children was a fantasy of a different sort. Tell us more. Well, I'm going to shamelessly suck up to our current children's laureate and embarrass him by choosing one of his books. You didn't tell me this, Charlie. I'm going to compose my face. Beyond the Deepwoods, which is the first book in the brilliant series that, Chris, remind me the name of the other book. Paul Stewart. Paul Stewart, yes. Created. I've always loved fantasy series and I've always loved illustrated books. The interesting thing about children's books is through your life it comes in waves. When you're a children, you obviously know a lot about children's books and you read a lot and then you grow up and you don't read any children's books for a long time and you have a huge gap in your knowledge and your books are out there and being written and then when you start having children of your own you get interested in children's books again and one of the great joys of having children is reading to them at night. Starting with the picture books, the likes of where the wild things are which is a fantastic book to read to children. It's not poetry but it feels like poetry. The words are so beautifully chosen and then you graduate up and you get to that terrible day where night after night as the kids get older you're falling asleep trying to read to them. You do that weird thing where you start reading gibberish. You hear this voice saying these very strange things and you realise it's you. You've gone into a half-dream world and you're making up stuff that isn't in the book. That happens to me anyway. And then your child says, oh come on, read some more. They're reading for themselves and before you know it, they don't want you to read them anymore. They're reading for themselves. They've graduated to that stage. Or you go in, was this what happened to me? It's time for our lovely book darling and she goes, go away. I'm practicing smoky eyes and she's sitting in front of the mirror with her make-up. And you think it's over. Anyway, sorry. It's a sad moment, isn't it? Sorry for you, your children feel really sorry for you because they know you want to still read to them but actually they're past it. But we're conflicted because we're delighted that our children are reading. You also do that thing where you come back and you say what we carry on here and say no, I've read those four chapters and you've got to jump ahead, you don't know what's going on and you've missed all that stuff. But yes, so then the kids take over and read for themselves which yes, it's a conflicting moment. And the deepwoods was one of my kids was that was the kind of book that they then wanted to read for themselves. And the reason this became the book that maybe you want to write for kids was both seeing the joy and the complete immersion that kids have when they really enjoy a book and I thought it would be nice to be able to do that, write something for my own kids but also there was one night where Frank had been reading this book and my wife and I were watching television and Frank came down he was in absolute floods of tears he was absolutely distraught and we thought it was kind of terrible what had happened to him, he couldn't speak he was so upset it's making me cry when I was thinking about it now and there's a terrible spoiler alert if you've not read the deepwoods books you should do but halfway through the first book chapters this is called The Bander Bear yes, the character called The Bander Bear lovely character look, look, there's a child there there's a child there that's destroying it for the hero teams up with them and they make this fantastic duro going off on their adventures I'm going to have to say what happens The Bander Bear gets eaten oh, exactly he'd never had this in a book that his favourite character in the book is just not there anymore and he was absolutely just destroyed by this and I remember thinking I want to make children cry like that I want to have a writer book that's going to have such an effect on a child they're going to be so immersed in the story so caught up in it that it's going to they have nightmares that you have that effect I thought that is an amazing thing and Frank still really remembers that and he loved those books and he remembers where he was and that's what you want as a writer to be remembered by people and to write books that affect people you're making me feel terrible in some senses I hear you, I just feel I need to share this I read beyond the deep woods to my daughter Katie more of a disciplinary measure but anyway she had to listen because I'd written it with Paul I was reading I got to chapter 8 she was really enjoying the bandabare I did this Frank Mustard I got to the end about to sort of close the book and turn the light out and Katie was just staring at me and she can really stare big stare, big frown on her face looking at me and I said would you like some water she said oh how could you at each point I thought oh my goodness I said what do you mean she said oh how could you there's a tear tricking down how could you do that to that lovely bandabare and I said right okay now Katie what you've got to understand is that I didn't do anything to that bandabare it was Paul Stuart so anyway Charlie it was Paul Stuart just tell friends it was Paul Stuart all his fault but no it sums up the amazing power of the book you've said an introduction about the books can work magic black squiggles black squiggles on a piece of paper and yet you can get so caught up in that that you can cry when one of these squiggles is no more and that is what we are celebrating that magical extraordinary power of the black squiggle whether it's on a screen on a piece of paper whatever it might be do you remember as readers when you were younger what that book was that had that effect on you what were the books that made you readers as well as writers for me it was definitely the cat in the hat because it was a really really early book and I know Dr Seuss isn't as popular here but I was one of four sisters and so my mother just did anything I think for a bit of peace and quiet and she endlessly read Dr Seuss to us and I identified really strongly with the cat in the hat and if you've ever read it he's a really nasty character he kind of comes into the house when mother's away and there are these two really gormnous children sitting there wondering what to do and the cat just reeks complete havoc he's got the fishbowl and the cane and the fish is panicked and the children are panicked and everybody's in a panic and then you see the legs of the mother coming back which is also panicking and the cat says don't worry and then he brings these weird things out of boxes called thing one and thing two and they kind of clean the whole place up but you're left really exhausted and he's traumatised by his visit and that's what I want to do really in life Meg wanting to traumatise children and Charlie wanting to make them cry I feel like this is somehow going in the wrong direction but I think we'll take it in the best possible but that is such a fantastic model for a children's book I mean I actually one of the few picture books that I've still got from when I was a kid is the cat in the hat came back and possibly even better and it is the fact that this so anxiety for a promo and the thing is that the cat is an adult and he's coming into this children's work and the cat should the adult should be the person who is in charge but it's chaos and they cause chaos and it's up to the children to try and restore their world and that's pretty much my model for my zombie series where the adults are all zombies they should be looking after the kids, they're not they should call them and eat them and it's about children actually in the end taking control and banishing the chaos and learning that perhaps not all adults are as perfect as we pretend to be Being like my three-year-old who just loves chaos he'd enjoy the chaos of it he'd be like, make a mess he's making a mess, I'll make a mess I never read the cat as a sinister kind of adult my two and a half year old is obsessed with the cat I think he sees him as like a superhero that's kind of what he wants to be in But Dr's use was a political cartoonist and I've just had this terrifying thought that in fact the cat in the hat is Donald Trump Slightly ruined it for me now No, he's way too cool, way too articulate Charlie, thinking about words and pictures and the importance of the interplay between the two of them Asterix, you say was the book that made you Yes, well it's very tricky when you're presented saying what is your favourite book I do loads of events with kids and schools, talks and things and inevitably some pesky kid always says what was your favourite book when you were a child and truthfully I can't really remember I read a lot, I loved reading we didn't have many books in the house and I haven't kept really any other than the cat in the hat and a couple of others I got books out of the school library I read as much as I could so picking a favourite was tricky but I definitely had a favourite genre I loved historical fiction and I loved fantasy mythological stuff so stories about the Greek heroes the Roman gods the Norse gods stories about King Arthur and his knights, about Robin Hood and actually in the 50s and the 60s was a golden age for historical fiction for kids with writers like Rosemary Sutcliffe and Roger Lancelin Green are still remembered but writers like Henry Trees and Geoffrey Trees these fantastic stories where kids were put into great historical events and I loved any sort of anything set in the middle ages medieval period. If the hero had a sword I was happy and so I read tons of this stuff and because I haven't kept any of the books and the books aren't still read on the whole now I can't particularly remember any titles but I also loved books with illustrations and pictures, comic books as well and you know I think it's a shame that for a while illustrated books went out of fashion I really enjoy reading adult books with illustrations in them Folio Society do beautiful books with illustrations and I always think illustrations can really enhance a story and I loved as a kid just getting lost in the illustrations I loved the sort of very detailed illustrations you'd get and things and I also loved books that made me laugh I was a big fan of Professor Brainstorm books so much so that the last couple of Christmases made a couple of films for BBC it was a crazy inventor making up these mad inventions and again the very first Professor Brainstorm book was illustrated by the brilliant Heath Robinson they've just opened a Heath Robinson Museum at in Pinner which you should go and visit it's a brilliant place and again I just loved getting lost in the detail of illustrations so I've tried to think of a book that encapsulated my love of Greek and Roman history and people with swords humour and illustrations and I think Asterix for me kind of encapsulates all of that I think comic books are a fantastic way to help kids get into reading they're not as intimidating and the classic Asterix books are so brilliantly done the illustrations are so beautiful and so well researched and you've got not only all that sort of Roman history but you've also got the humour in it you've got the humour of the storytelling you've got the humour of the characters and you've got the humour of the language and you've got the visual humour really for me as someone who went on to to make comedy there were a great primer in that and for me I think probably my favourite of the Asterix books was Asterix in Britain because I could really appreciate the satirical edge to that book as well though we can't actually get that anymore because of Brexit because it's not it's been withdrawn I think don't even joke about that by the way I apologise for my croaky throat I've been broadcasting all week talking a lot about love to read so excuse my coughing and croaking over here can I just have one thing to that to pictures and comics and all that kind of stuff if anyone in the audience has a moment where they decide they don't really like to read so much or they have a friend or a child or something who doesn't really like to read that much give them Calvin and Hobbes because Calvin and Hobbes is the funniest cartoon series kind of ever and it's just as good for grown-ups as it is for kids and it will just make you howl with laughter so and it's a lot It's very pitchable as well isn't it Meg so Calvin goes into imaginary worlds all the time things happen all the time and it's got that real sort of storytelling quality but animated as well pictures on the page can look as if they're jumping and dancing is extraordinary Valley it wouldn't be a discussion about young children and stories without Roald Dull and he was a big influence in your life as a reader of the child Yeah he was the first author to sort of turn me on to fiction I was reading early I mean my parents didn't read to me because they couldn't speak English or read English they spoke it but it couldn't read it or write it so my dad used to take me and my sister and leave us at a local library and I wasn't into fiction I was reading books about Vikings and dinosaurs and volcanoes and anything with great pictures in it tigers and all sorts and it was when I was sitting at school and I was about seven that a teacher this is another change from today we used to get story time at the end of every day where we'd sit down as a class and the teacher would get a book out and read to us and she picked up this book and I didn't know this book it was called James and the Giant Peach and she started reading to us and from the moment she'd got to the end of the first page I'm sitting there looking at my friend Danny and we're thinking can we laugh because his parents are dead because it's quite funny but quite dark and then all the way through and it had such an effect on me that Danny and I both of us we decided to write our own version so I went away and I borrowed a copy so I drew lines with a pencil and a ruler and then I copied my favourite bits word for word and I changed it it was really short and I changed it to Bally and the Giant Peach that's how much I wanted to be a part of that books entire kind of you know it's world I wanted to jump into that world and we are having competitions with my friends about what kind of fruit would be great to live in and you know the ants and all the rest of it and I then showed this story to my teacher who kind of first she laughed at me and then she told me off in a really kind of quite calm way but said you copy Mr Darl's stories you must write your own so that's where I started thinking about writing but he's the guy that turned me on to fiction it was you know I was drawn into the worlds that he created because they were essentially for me the greatest thing was the adults were either completely hapless or a little bit evil and the children were both and the children in the stories wherever they were good or bad they were always the best characters they were always the ones that you wanted to follow it felt like a bit of empowerment I didn't know what empowerment meant when I was a kid but that's what it felt like it felt like we were in charge with the kids stuff the adults and I love that Bally I love that it's fantastic because story time was an incredible time it was a best time it was just before the even better time which was called going home time the same with you Bally when we had story time what we were required to do was to listen we could look out of the window we could look down at our desk we could do anything we just needed to listen and then the teacher would read a chapter book to us and that was the brilliant thing wasn't it it was a chapter book that was slightly ahead of what we might have picked up I remember my teacher reading The Hobbit at story time we had the same we just listened and I just loved that time end of the day each day half an hour listening to The Hobbit and I listened all the way through we got to the eve of the battle of the five armies and I got flew sorry to mention this I got flew and was off school for two weeks I came back you'd like this Meg they were reading Black Beauty brilliant book but it wasn't the end of The Hobbit so I went to my library and I got out The Hobbit and I read The Hobbit even though it was quite difficult with my teacher's voice in my head and I read it all the way through got to the battle of the five armies which if you've seen the film doesn't in fact last eight hours but it was brilliant absolutely fantastic that modern thing for me that was my book and the extraordinary thing now is that when I go into schools and I talk to teachers and I say what about story time I met with often blank in comprehension I say you know at the end of the day story time when you read it feels as though there's something magical that's removed from modern children's childhood absolutely and for you I'm thinking particularly you grew up in a house without books being spoken how would you have had access to the world of the imagination how would you have become who you are changed the lives that you've changed without that it wouldn't have happened it would have been a case of me not thinking or continuing to think that books were for other people stories for other people can I ask you to do something write that down for me and send it to me I want to send it to Michael Morpergo who is a sort of previous children's laureate and he started this campaign to bring back story time in schools that would be such a brilliant that goes to you too as well I'm going to throw this out to the audience and ask which of the children in this audience would like to have story time in their school I think that's a pretty ringing endorsement for story time do any of you have it at the moment do any of you get story time at the moment do you get story time at your school everyday not always so I think it's clearly bring back story time education is amongst you after story time do you then have to sit an exam on grammar or comprehension or are you giving decline and fall rather than Morro send that I think we should point out I don't think we need to but just to point out that this isn't the fault of the teachers any of them would love to be able to sit and actually spend some time reading and introduce young people to a different range of books that I was read books like black beauty I would never have picked up that beauty in Reddit so the railway children I never would have read the cover I looked at the cover thinking and then the teacher read it to me and I loved it so you know it's about expanding the breadth of kind of what we understand to be of course it's not the fault of teachers absolutely all I would like to know and I'm going to see if I can find this out is whether Justin Greening had story time I'd like to know and if she did I'm going to suggest that might be a good thing to do in all our schools absolutely Do you mind if I ask whether it's a private or a state school? And are you anything to do with Ofsted? Oh excellent good good well this sounds entirely good then I'm really interested when I was thinking about this event I was thinking about the books that made me and I was an obsessive little nerdy bookworm from day one but I very much had the sense that there was a kind of children's canon out there and that I like to go rogue and read around it and I read English at university and I had exactly the same problem where my supervisors at Cambridge were very much on the opinion that you read the canon and that if you I tried to write a dissertation on some modern American fiction that my director of studies just looked at me and in comprehension that I could be considering these books as were the other Cambridge thesis which turned out that they were so I've always been very against the idea that there are books that people should read or must read and the idea that actually if people are engaged by stories and if their imaginations are fired up doesn't really matter what they're reading and I'd like to put this to you at this point Chris do you think it matters what children read or do they just need to be reading? They just need to be reading absolutely it doesn't matter what and there are places in schools specially designed for this it's remarkable many people don't know about this but they're actually called school libraries they're amazing and they are these places where you sit and these extraordinary people called school librarians actually come up and they sort of just quietly assess you and decide what you might like to read they don't insist they just show you a bookshelf and they say I think you look to me like someone who might be interested in fruit and these sort of creatures, insects who live in them Bally would you like this book and you go away with this book and you think wow and you turn into readers and writers and I think absolutely at the heart of our sort of cultural life and I'm going to be banging on about this a lot in coming weeks is the school library the importance of a school library and school librarians in creating readers of the future and more than that readers who will leave their school library go out into the world grow up to become people who realise the absolute vital nature of public libraries and will use their public libraries this is all holistic and needs to be sort of addressed especially if you're you're trying to uphold a culture of reading within wider British culture or in my case I developed a culture of reading that my parents didn't have but my daughters the eldest is 16 and the youngest is 3 both of them have a culture of reading because I have a culture of reading and they wouldn't have got that if they'd been and do you mind what they read? Not at all. I spend a lot of my year working with schools I'm an ambassador for the reading agency who's reading a head programme which he's because Sixport Challenge so I've been going into prisons, young offenders, colleges so adult teenage youngsters it doesn't matter what you read as you say the point is read but I really do wish we had more school libraries and libraries there's only one category I'm slightly worried about that's pony books a bit inappropriate pony books Meg Russell come back on that please Yeah well you know it's funny because I started reading to my to my daughter when she was about you know one day old or something and she's not a reader and I always think that it was sort of sent to me by you know Zeus or whoever's up there Doctor Zeus Doctor Zeus exactly to sort of say to people because there's a kind of superiority well if you read to children and they turn into readers but I read to this poor child every bloody day of her life and she's a mathematician and she's obsessed with with physics and gets back at me for all those years by trying to explain to me what you must be so ashamed Meg what quantum physics is but I bet she's intrigued by the narrative and the stories behind maths and physics um yeah yeah no she is and she is starting to read a bit more now but you know I kind of think it isn't for absolutely 100% everybody I don't think every single person and when you think about it this is me playing devil's advocate sorry I mean I basically couldn't exist without reading and for me it's like the most it's a place to go when the world is making you feel really tired and at the moment with all the American elections on and you can hear I'm American so not only did I have to take responsibility for Brexit and then like lose the high ground that I've had for 28 years with all my American friends but now I gotta do this whole dumb thing with Donald Trump and if he wins I'm gonna have to kill myself and it's just gonna be a nightmare but I've been reading these books all by someone called Elizabeth Jane Howard all set between World War I and World War II and then through World War II and I can actually go there and go into a place where you don't have to listen to people talk about Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and so I couldn't really live without it but I do think there are people who maybe like to play football or love numbers my daughter talks about numbers in a way that I talk about words so it's not like absolutely everybody has to do it but if he can do it it makes your brain ticker and happier and the point being if your daughter had found books that she wanted to read but you had thought they were a bit trashy or maybe they weren't proper literature would you have just been happy that she was reading oh my god I begged her for about 10 years to read Harry Potter and I know there are people who are really snooty about Harry Potter I begged her to read Harry Potter and in the end I gave her 5 pounds and said just read a few chapters and then she became such an addict and then addicted to the audio books that Stephen Fryer was reading and for the next 10 years she did nothing but read Harry Potter and by that time I couldn't afford to pay her her prices had gone up so it's very bad post-Brexit paying 5 pounds for a chapter you would be in trouble now Charlie what about you? I just like hearing Meg say Harry Potter Harry Potter it matters not a job what what they're reading if they can read and they get into reading and they enjoy they find out how pleasurable reading can be that's a great thing it's not a given that they will do that if they read a lot I mean I've got three boys again you know the house full of books I think it's actually built out of books I have read to them a lot and they read a lot as kids but they don't read a lot now and what I really noticed was you know they all liked completely different books so the eldest one you give it to the second one and you say yeah Frank really loved this and well I don't so you know you can't say these are the books occasionally you get these sort of lists that are done by the government or by I think Andrew Motion did a list of the books that all children should read which included Paradise Lost which made me think that he'd never actually met a child or probably read Paradise Lost I think one of the large problems with these lists is that one of the things I talk about to teachers when we promote reading the pleasure is to say don't impose we have to be careful not to impose our own views of what constitutes good reading as adults on to young people lists like this automatically do it you've got one person's view or in Michael Go's case one something's view of what people should be reading and it's ridiculous and the thing is that there are so many books out there when we're growing up you say that but my daughter sometimes you need to take children in hand my daughter developed quite frankly an obsession with Jacqueline Wilson which I could live with I can understand that but it was her veneration of Nick Sharrett the illustrator I found very well I think that would have been hard to cope with and I felt that at some point I should try and intervene she began writing her own sort of books illustrating them in the style of Nick Sharrett and she was really profoundly upset with me and her mother because we weren't divorced and so she did write a novella in the style of Jacqueline Wilson illustrated in the style of Nick Sharrett called broken up mums all about mothers talking at the school gate about how terrible their ex-husband is I didn't know I was going to share that I didn't know I was going to share the fact that as a teenager I was obsessed with Sweet Valley High and it was all fine it was fine so that was your Cambridge thesis you can see why they had such a problem with it I was going to say there is so much out there now so much writing for young people children and youth for wonderful examples, exemplars of it are there discoveries that you've made recently in that market in that genre that you particularly want to share with everyone today and then we will move on to questions so have them ready Chris I'll start with you Yes because I met him outside he was going on the library demonstration wonderful man called Chris Priestley who I've known for many years we were both cartoonists together for the Economist magazine Economist magazine in the early 1990s interesting time and Chris left the Economist I think what broke him after many years of having to draw a helmet, coal dancing the conga and the members of the European Central Bank juggling metaphorical things what really broke him was when he had to draw the disembodied hand of the Benelux countries pointing at some sort of political crisis he said that's it I can't do this anymore no more disembodied hand he left and became an artist and a writer very brave because the Economist paid very well it was called the Economist and so Chris left can I just interrupt for one second I don't think anyone in the room knows what you're talking about I can't tell you how often this happens disembodied hand just give us the name of the book Chris this is you sound just like my daughter often does this she once lent forward to me during just such an interesting sort of life experience she lent forward to me and said you know dad it's not all about you and you said yes it is I won't tell you what I said but Chris left the Economist a wonderful magazine and he embarked on a career as a writer and illustrator last year he produced this astonishing book called anything that isn't this and he illustrated it with beautiful beautiful illustrations it's a YA novel 70 black and white paintings in sort of half tone it's sort of it's kafker-esque in a interesting way and it's partly recommended Bally? like everybody I think on this panel I think we're quite lucky we get sent books quite a lot you know stuff prepublication promotional copies and I've been known to steal them from school librarians association conferences stealing's not quite the right word I walk up to people on the poor librarians no it's not the librarians it's publishers I wouldn't steal from librarians publishers you walk up and they have their stall and you go oh yeah have a copy so I was sent a copy of Alan Gibbons's latest book The Trap Alan is also on the cement and he's got it quite a big trap because he never keeps it shut so it's wise on the thing thankfully but the trap it blew me away it was just I like Alan's writing anyway and Alan is a friend but I don't really like reviewing books for people I'm friend with and I got this book and I thought I hope I enjoy this and I opened it and I just didn't stop reading it it's a very challenging book about the state of play regarding the whole monitoring of young British Muslim males and females and their possible involvement in radicalisation it's about a young brother and sister whose eldest the eldest brother has been basically brainwashed by fascists and has ended up in Syria and is around or not they don't know but they're being hounded by the media so the family are having to move it's a very timely exploration of what's going on the topic is very timely but it's not about the issues it's just a fantastic thriller and it's a very well drawn thriller and it's a book I read it, I literally read it in one I think I got up to go to the loo I read it in one sitting wonderful, wonderful book I'm going off piece here because I was going to recommend something this isn't a recent book but I'm just looking at the demographic of the people in the audience and I think there's probably hardly a child in this audience who wouldn't absolutely love this series and it's called the, I don't even know how to pronounce it, the Pridane Trilogy but I think it's six books and it was written I think maybe in the 60s or 70s but it's, I kind of introduce it slightly as Hobbit Light and the first book is called The Book of Three and it's by a guy called Lloyd Alexander and they are just absolute I was never a big huge fantasy fan but they are totally fantastic and if anybody buys it and doesn't like it, get in touch with me and I will send you your money back there we all are witness to that promise Charlie? Well unlike Meg I've always been a massive fan of fantasy when I graduated from reading like historical books and mythological stories in the 60s was a great time for fantasy and fantasy books being available I've obviously worked my way through Tolkien and the likes and for me I like books that take me out of my boring little life my ordinary world and when I was a kid I didn't want to read books about other kids going to school I wanted to be taken on an adventure and I think a book is a bit like The Tardis for a start on the inside you can fit the whole universe in there but The Tardis turns up, you get in there the doctor is a bit like the author you can go anywhere you want in time anywhere you want in the world and that's what I always loved as a kid but you can also go travel around the universe you can meet other cultures you can expand your mind and you can even go to fantasy places and that's what I always loved some people do love reading books about other people like themselves that they can feel an affinity with to me that's a bit like doctor who turns up in The Tardis and says where do you want to go oh I just want to go around this local area and meet the people like me that's when a book is more like a bus for me where yes you see those familiar sites and there have been some fantastic books written like that you see the familiar sites the bus of people talking about the things going on in the world around them but if doctor who turns up I'm not going to take me around the corner I want to go on an adventure so I've always loved fantasy books and one of the books the series that I really got into when my kids started reading through my kids was a series by Philip Reeve called Mortal Engines it's got the most brilliant idea for a series which is in the future the oceans have all dried up and become these vast kind of deserts and all the cities in the world have rebuilt themselves up on giant caterpillar tracks and they trundle around across these huge empty oceans and because there's a lack of energy and resources the bigger cities are chasing the smaller ones and if they catch them they kind of devour them and recycle all the raw materials in there and there's brilliance there's fantastic characters lots of adventure in there and there's a lot of humour as well in the books so I would recommend them to any kid who likes a bit of fantasy and adventure and recommendation is also right at the heart of the love to read campaign so if you're on social media hashtag love to read share your recommendations please I promised a little bit of time for questions so does anyone have a question for any or all of our authors right in the front here there's a microphone coming your way and is there another question which we can get the next mic too anyone else got a question this little boy here if you didn't become an author what would you become very snappy answers please Bob Marley Bob Marley that's good I would have been possibly an accountant I've done lots of messy doodles in my accounts down the margins Meg? Oh easy I would have just been a pony owner Well I'm afraid I'm going to cheat and say I would have been an actor but I already do a bit of that anyway Lovely thank you Are there any tips that you would like to say about writing books Do you know I thought you said are there any chips I hope so My tip if you want to be an illustrator designer artist anything like that but I think it holds true for writers as well is buy a sketchbook or a notebook and just get into the habit of drawing everyday or maybe just writing things down everyday just have a book and it's just your own you don't need to show anyone else but just get into the habit of thinking creatively everyday and it'll build up it'll build your imagination up and it's a great way to start a creative journey Write a lot, read a lot write some more, read lots more you're never going to be a perfect writer so what you do is you start somewhere and you keep on trying to improve I read IU SOOTOWNS and I've always this is why I do what she said because I idolise her as a kid she said famously she wrote a thousand to fifty hundred words a day that's all she did so I started mimicking that then I became, I was lucky enough to become friends with her and got to know her she really did do this Mrs. Willman who even after she lost a sight continued to try and dictate a thousand to fifty hundred words a day I've always stuck to that, but what you'll find is every writer has their own particular method. You just need to find yours, but it involves writing a lot and reading a lot, lots and lots. I would say just ignore what everybody here says, really, because I never kept a notebook, and I certainly don't write 1,500 words a day. Probably my only advice, read Calvin and Hobbes. That'll do it. And pony books, when you're older. Or get a pony. I'd just say, going back to something that Valley said earlier, is copy other people. That's what I did when I started writing. If I read something that I really enjoyed, I'd try and write something a bit like it. And I used to do little drawings as well. It's a good way of learning how to write, because you're also looking at how other people do it. And you think, oh, that's interesting. That's how you can tell the story. And don't be ashamed of copying something like something like this. You're quite young. Your experiences of the world are not huge. You probably see most of the world through television, and films, and reading books, and looking at stuff on the internet. So feel free to copy as much as you like. Played your eyes, in other words. Yes. But copy from the best people. But yes, read a lot, and write a lot. It's like riding a bike. The only way you can learn how to do it is to get on and start pedaling. Let's take this one. Please, can I see each of you do an Albus Dumbledore impression? No, no. I thought I was. I went along to the comic con at Olympia recently, and I was asked what have you come as, because everyone dresses up as characters. And I said I've come as the supply teacher at Hogwarts. I didn't get a laugh. I really didn't get a laugh. Go on, the very back there. Do you ever get bored when you're writing books? All the time. It's hell. It's hell writing books. Sometimes it's really boring and really frustrating, and you call people up and go, I can't, I don't know why I ever thought I could do this. Yeah, it can be a real nightmare. Just to cheer you up. But on the other hand, when it's going well, it is fantastic. But it is, it's a strange lifestyle if you think about it. Even so it says, what have you been doing for the last year? Well, I've been sitting in a little room at home making stuff up. And yeah. You get stuck. You get horribly, horribly stuck. And you don't know what's supposed to happen next. And yeah, I mean, it's boring but like in a really horrible way. But that's only sometimes. Sometimes it's fabulous. I always try to say mindful of the facts as well. I agree with Meg sometimes it can be incredibly boring. But I try to say mindful of the fact that what I'm doing, what we're doing is something that is actually quite privileged in a way. And a lot of people want to do what we do. So it's remembering that that kind of gets you through. That's because they don't know what it's really like. Yeah, but we're not supposed to tell them because they won't want to do it. But it is hard, isn't it? You've just heard three writers say just how difficult the process is and how hard it is writing. And you're right, you're right. Doing the pitches is fantastic though. Fantastic. Great fun. Never boring. You can put radio free on and listen to that. You can do these wonderful illustrations, but you need the words. You need writers like this to struggle with the words so that I can then come along and illustrate their books. And when they won't, which sometimes happens, because writers are very difficult, you probably understand this, very difficult people. Sometimes I'm forced to write myself and that's why I know how difficult it is. And I only do that so I can do the pictures. A little guy who's got the microphone there, and if we could get the other microphone to this girl here on this side, please. Try and whip through these questions as quick as possible because there are so many of them. If you were to write a new book, what would it be called? I'll answer very quickly. I'm writing a book at the moment. It's one of the Goth Girl books. It's called Goth Girl and the Sinister Symphony. It will have an orchestra of zombies. But they're very polite zombies, and they apologise if their ears fall off in the middle of their violin solos and stuff. It might be a blind-born opera. I'm working on three ideas at the moment that I have to do, and if I wasn't doing those, I'd write a book called Planet of the Chickens, which I've been planning to write for about 18 months, but it never managed to clear enough space to actually write it because it's a side project, but that's why I'd write it. Sounds like you need some illustrations. Absolutely. I'm counting on our previous relationship. Good, good. Meg, write that pony. Oh, no, I have no idea. I just wrote a little book called Good Dog McTavish, and I think the next one will probably be called Bad Dog McTavish. That arrived on my kitchen table this morning, and it looks lovely, apart from that scene and the stables. Yeah, the sex scene. I'd like to write a book called The Return of Harry Potter. As long as I can get all the money for it. This is a question for Chris Waddell. Do you prefer illustrating or writing? I prefer illustrating all day long. Love it, I love it. And as I say, the only reason I write is so that I can do the pictures, but if other people write for me, that's even better. So I love illustrating other people's. I do this thing sometimes. If someone gives me a book, this has happened a couple of times recently, someone gives me a book and I really enjoy it. I take out a little pencil and I start drawing on the book they've given me, and then I'll do a little Instagram picture of it, and then I'll just wait, and then sometimes this has happened twice recently, the publisher will firm me up and say, would you like to illustrate this book? I said, oh, yes, I'd love to. How did you know? I know, I know. I said, look out for Frances Harding, The Lightry. I drew on that. I drew on that. That was all my own fault. Frances gave me permission, but I just drawn it when I was sitting on a train and then the publisher said, would you like to illustrate it, so now it's a thing. How fabulous. Question here. Been up like in the night writing a book. How long have you been up in the night writing a book? Does it show? When I wrote my first one, I was managing a nightclub and a ball of bar and then a nightclub, so I used to go get home at four or five in the morning and then write till about 10 am and then go to sleep till about two and then wake up and go back to the bar and cash up and open up and sack people and hire people and all the rest of the stuff that you do when you're a manager and then I'd write again the following evening and we might shut at three and I'd write between four and six and then go to bed, so the entire early part of my career spent writing ridiculous hours. Nowadays I stay up till about two or three at the latest. All my best ideas, I have really late at night. They're brilliant, fantastic. Some really, really good ideas and then the next morning I get up and I look at what I've done and I go, oh my goodness, and so what I do is I never throw anything away but what I have in my studio is what I call the naughty drawer and I just open the naughty drawer whatever I've thought of in the early hours of the morning. I put it away in the naughty drawer and just shut it and then every so often when I need inspiration once a year I'll open the naughty drawer and see what's inside. Sometimes things in the naughty drawer suddenly they've changed, I don't know. They've become good, the return of Harry Potter. I want to read the naughty drawer, I don't know about anyone else. What are your opinions on restricting the books that people read or banning books? Banning books. Oh, how much time have you got? I'm sure we're all against it. Yeah, I was going to say, I think. We're all against it. The issue now is not sex and violence. The issue is writing cross cultures so if you're white and you're writing a book in the voice of a black person that gets you into a lot of trouble these days or if you're straight and you're writing in the voice of a gay person that gets you into trouble. So it's a messy subject but I think we would all probably agree that you can do whatever you like as a writer. We're humans that write about humans. It's the best way to approach it what we were talking about earlier. The situation Meg is describing it's a section of people that are talking about this stuff not the majority of well-adjusted people. It's not about appropriation it's about representing other humans. People castigate writers for using their imagination. When you write, how do you write? Do you come in with an idea straight in your head and the plot all laid out or do you just write free hand as you go along? That's how I write. I often start with just a line. My last book, I woke up in the morning with a line in my head that was when I came home from work one day to find the dogs talking about him. I knew that was the first line of the book but I had no idea what the book was so then I just wrote a second line and a third line and by the end I knew what the book was about. All writers write differently there's no right or wrong way of doing it. Some people like to plan everything some people like to do what Meg does which is just start and see where it goes. Personally I always find that if I know how a story is going to end or a book or even a series is going to end it gives me a certain confidence that I think doesn't matter how I get there and how many details I make on the way and meet people and do these things as long as I know roughly where I'm heading towards it makes it for me easier easier to write a story and I certainly find that I know that a lot of kids when they write stories they'll have a great first page and they know how to start it in anything or I don't know what to write next and I always say to them if you can think where the story ends rather than where it begins give you more of a chance to get through but that's just what works for me. What works for me is stationery so I always get a book that I'm going to write in whatever the story is and how many pages are in that notebook that's how long my story is going to be it always works and I divide it up that's why Goth Girl has 13 chapters that's why Otlin has 10 chapters it's just the different notebooks that have different number of pages and that's why I know a little bit like Charlie I know how it will end because there's the last page and I know it's got to end by the last page so for me that and a good pen as long as I've got a pen that I like and I can always stop and do drawings if I get stuck. I follow a story mountain the stuff you get taught at junior school maybe some of you've learnt recently and I pitch it to myself like an Act 1 Act 2 Act 3 or what they call a beginning middle end essentially I like to know my character right first before they come into the story I like to know when they're going to kind of what the motivation is what's going to drive them to engage with this plot this story mountain why don't they just go back to bed when they face a difficulty and as Charlie was saying I like to know what happens at the end and then I can go anywhere I want but I have this framework that I can follow a path that I can follow and I can add things to but question right to the back there what was your favourite book and why as in ever your desert island book that was a good click because I have about 20 I'm not going to let you do all 20 so my favourite ever I will just say a book that I re-read every year because I still love it because I read it just at the right time and there are books like that where you just find it and you go wow and you never lose that is Catcher in the Rye if I was going to pick an adult one mine would be 100 years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that I re-read every couple of years find new things for a children's book the biggest influence on me Su Townsend so just as a nod to her I'd take The Secret Diary of Adrenaline Bally I do a little series called Illustrations to Unwritten Books their misheard book titles one of them is 100 years of Solihull God that's my marriage my in-laws living soul that explains the pony just very quickly because we actually we skipped a category I think we ran out of time slightly so to save me thinking of another book I'll say that one which is the Gormand Gas Trilogy by Mervyn Peake which is a brilliant brilliant sort of semi fantasy book series and it does feature the ultimate teenage misfit character called Steer Pike and it's got beautiful beautiful illustrations by Mervyn Peake it's beautiful isn't it but I would love to illustrate it I think we had a discussion about that last time I sent an instagram picture happening guys one more question here and I'm really sorry we are going to have to wrap it up because you've been the most fantastic audience as I mentioned everyone is signing books so you will be able to put your question to them then but we'll finish with one last question What was your first book? My first book this is very quick my first book I well wasn't my first book it was my first reading scheme Peter and Jane that was going to teach me to read it was sort of numbered 1, 2, 3 all the way up the book that I got stuck on was Peter and Jane 2B couldn't get beyond that that was hard and then I found on my teacher's desk this amazing book called Peter and Jane 12 C and I thought if only I can get over this and I can get to 12 C I can then learn to read and then I need never read another book again it would be fantastic How did that go? I saw a book next to it which had a bloodhound eating a cream cake and it was called Acton Sax and the Diamond Thieves and I thought that looks interesting so I ignored Peter and Jane 12 C and I picked that up instead and started to read that and that I think turned me into that was the first book I read all by myself first book that I that I read all by myself it was a non-fiction book about vikings or dinosaurs I couldn't remember I know it would have had some kind of fierce or evil looking picture or photograph on the cover because that's what I went for exploding volcanoes, snarling vikings, whatever it was but the first book I ever owned I didn't own a book for myself until I was 12 and that was Adrian Mull I remember begging my grandmother to buy me and he did probably pony for Jean or something no idea Charlie, no did you mean the first book you read or the first book I wrote? first book I wrote you should listen properly to the questions I wrote lots of books before I managed to write one that was good enough to be published it was a book for adults, a crime story called King of the Ants, whatever you do read it until you are a lot older it's very very unsuitable it's even worse than Meg's pony book and the first book I wrote for children was a Young James Bond book called Silverfin wonderful, which is there ready to be signed thank you all as I say for being the most fantastic and engaged audience it is such a testament to the joys and wonders of reading that you're all here and you've asked such good questions everyone will be signing books but meanwhile please join me in giving a huge round of applause to Chris, Bally, Meg and Charlie one final plea hashtag love to read let's spread the word everyone, thank you so much have a lovely rest of your afternoon