My earliest reading memory
One of the most intriguing books, when I was around six years old, was Gangles by Ronald McCuaig. The main character, a wild girl from Australia, could stand on top of fountains and travelled around with a whale by balancing on the water spray the whale exhaled. Reading that book was one of the great experiences of my childhood. That is completely impossible to understand when I leaf through it now: how could something so small grow into something so huge? Pure magic.
My favourite book growing up
A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin. No one above, no one beside. I must have read it 10 times in my youth. A young boy with wizard abilities goes too far out of hubris and lets an evil creature into the world. From then on it chases him, until he faces it and calls it by its true name, which is his own – what more could an 11-year-old desire to speculate over?
