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I read a book a day when I was a kid. My family was not literary; we did not have any books in the house.

I grew up in a completely bookless household. It was my father's boast that he had never read a book from end to end. I don't remember any of his ladies being bookish. So I was entirely dependent on my schoolteachers for my early reading with the exception of 'The Wind in the Willows,' which a stepmother read to me when I was in hospital.

My view, as one who taught it, is that the whole purpose of a literary education should be to tell people that these things exist. I don't think any teacher should try to 'teach an author,' but rather simply describe what the author has written. And this is what I tried to do.

Literature has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. I can't think back before a time that I didn't love writing and reading. When I was really young, my mother would read poems to me. I loved Edgar Allan Poe - I am sure I didn't understand it, but I loved it.

I'm not terribly conversant with children's literature in general. I tend to read books for adults, being an adult.

When I started writing and illustrating, I knew little of classic children's literature. My stories came from real life, from my concerns about what was happening in the world.

I don't read books. I like to read newspapers and magazines, but I've never learnt to enjoy books or novels.

I remember thinking that people were crazy for reading the same book more than once, but I now have a new-found appreciation for the re-discovery of literature. The lessons we learned from books in the school curriculum are reinvented and updated when we read as adults.

I was learning book-keeping at the age of 12, but it never stopped me from pursuing literature. Over the years, I grew to love the written word.

When you get inside a literary novel you feel that the author, more often than not, just doesn't know enough about things. They haven't been around enough - novelists never go anywhere. Once I discovered true books about real things - books like 'How To Run a Company' - I stopped reading novels.