Books That Kids Read Should Be About

Any Story That Gets Us Thinking, And Particularly Young People, Thinking Why? Whether It's As A Result Of Reading The Book, Or Coming Out Of The Theatre Or The Cinema, I Think We Should Just Simply Be Asking The Question 'why'? Why Did It Happen To Those People? Was It Necessary? And Anything That Gets Us Thinking Like That Is Really Important.

Our Great Problem, Is That Children Now Know Whatever They Want To Know - At The Press Of A Button They Can Discover All Horrors Of The Adult World. They Know Very Early On That The World Is Sometimes A Very Dark, Difficult And Complex Place, And The Literature They Read Must Reflect That. Otherwise We're Just Entertaining Them To Pass The Time.

There Is The Myth That Writing Books For Children Is Easier Than Writing Books For Grownups, Whereas We Know That Truly Great Books For Children Are Works Of Genius, Whether It's 'alice In Wonderland' Or The 'gruffalo' Or 'northern Lights.' When It's A Great Book, It's A Great Book, Whether It's For Children Or Not.

Perhaps It Is Partly That We Need To Love Books Ourselves As Parents, Grandparents And Teachers In Order To Pass On That Passion For Stories To Our Children. It's Not About Testing And Reading Schemes, But About Loving Stories And Passing On That Passion To Our Children.

A Notion For A Story Is For Me A Confluence Of Real Events, Historical Perhaps, Or From My Own Memory To Create An Exciting Fusion.