Favourite children's books

Gillian Flynn

"I loved stories about bold, adventurous children (particularly as I was a fairly shy, unadventurous child). I loved Meg in A Wrinkle in Time, Lucy in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, Tom in Tom Sawyer, but I think my favourite was Alice in Wonderland."

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Rachel Joyce

"My favourite childhood book might have to be The Diddakoi by Rumer Godden. I read it again with my youngest daughter recently and she was enthralled. I loved reading as a child. I was unhappy sometimes and very willing to believe in things I didn't know."

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Patrick deWitt

"I loved Roald Dahl and still do. A nice combination of bile and humour."

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Emma Donoghue

"The complete Narnia cycle is a wonderful allegory of how books work - they literally yank you into another world, as is always happening to those kids at the start of each adventure."

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Ellen Feldman

"I fell in love with the Betsy-Tacy novels by Maud Hart Lovelace early on and read them through more than once. Looking back now I realise that one of the reasons I adored the books was that Betsy was, from the age of five, a storyteller and writer in the making."   

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Paula McLain

"I really loved Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White. I've been reading that to my kids (five and seven) lately and we got to the part where Charlotte dies. I completely lost control and couldn't stop crying. My children both looked at me as if I'd lost my mind, naturally!"

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Christos Tsiolkas

"As a child I loved the Narnia stories, they made me realise that the imagination could take you anywhere. I also loved David Copperfield - that grand sprawling narrative, those amazing characters. I loved disappearing in that world." 

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David Mitchell

"My most inspirational childhood books were the Earthsea series by Ursula le Guin - intelligent fantasy that still inspires me today." 

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Sarah Waters

"I was most influenced by ghost and horror stories, and one that still stands out for me is The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs - a really brilliant little tale, in which a couple make a series of wishes on a shrivelled oriental talisman, with dreadful results... I must have been rather a macabre child. But a lot of that early affinity with the gothic has found its way into my own fiction."

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Sarah Moss

"I read all the time as a child, everything from the Chalet School to Jane Eyre, with a particular passion for the Anne of Green Gables and Laura Ingalls Wilder series [Little House on the Prairie]. In general, I'd say that I started with literary responses to the experience of being female and I'm still working on that now."

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Patrick Gale

"The novels I repeatedly re-read were Tove Jansson's Moomin novels, Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth and Lewis Carroll's two Alice books, all of which I still return to when in need of comfort." 

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Aimee Bender

"I loved (predictably) the books about magical lands/places, like the Oz books and the L'Engle books - I must've read A Wrinkle in Time yearly for a good while. And The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, a gem by Julie Andrews (same one) completely charmed me."

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Betsy Tobin

"When I was 11, I remember being entranced by Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me Margaret - not a book about God actually - it was about boys and periods, as I recall.

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Charlie Higson

"Norman Hunter's Professor Branestawm books are fantastically funny and inventive and I've been doing my best to introduce them to modern kids. I've been gratified that they seem to love them just as much as I did when I was a boy."

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Amy Waldman

"Of many contenders I would say Anne of Green Gables. To read, as a young girl myself, about an orphan girl who arrives to a couple wanting a boy - and then proves herself so bright and imaginative - really seized me. I wanted to be her, red hair and all."

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Maggie O'Farrell

"There are so many. The Moomin books, The Secret Garden, and Where the Wild Things Are." 

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A.D. Miller

"When I was very young my mother gave me Archy and Mehitabel, which I loved. When I was 10-ish, I used to read a lot of Agatha Christie books. If we're talking about school days, then perhaps The Great Gatsby or A Handful of Dust."

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Kate Atkinson

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Just William." 

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William Boyd

"I vividly remember reading The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. Between the ages of 10 and 12, I was completely obsessed by Lord of the Rings, and I'm very fond of Winnie the Pooh and Alice in Wonderland because the characters in the books are timeless and ageless. We still meet Eeyores and Mad Hatters as adults."

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Malorie Blackman

"I remember being particularly inspired by The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. I loved what it had to say about believing in yourself and believing in something bigger/better/greater than yourself, even when others are laughing at you or telling you that you're wrong."

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Lauren Child

"The Shrinking of Treehorn by Florence Parry Heide, illustrated by Edward Gorey, and John Burningham's picture books such as John Patrick Norman McHennessy, the boy who was always late. There's something pleasantly anarchic about these books that appeals to me."

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Michael Morpurgo

"I read comics a lot when I was very little, but the first proper book I really loved was Treasure Island. I still think it is one of the great books." 

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Cressida Cowell

"The Hobbit was one of my favourite books as a child." 

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