You’ve just been announced as Australia’s children’s laureate – congratulations! What’s the first book that had a transformative effect on you?
It was a German children’s classic called Struwwelpeter (Straw Peter), written in 1845. My grandmother had the book. It’s a collection of cautionary tales, and in colourful pictures and rhyming language it showed the various awful consequences of disobeying your parents, playing with matches or sucking your thumb – you would end up maimed or disfigured or dead. It was kind of terrifying but it was so over the top it was quite funny to me, as a four-year-old. And I was transfixed, because I’d never know what was going to happen when I turned that page – what horror would be awaiting me.
