I was a total book-a-day girl, the most frequent borrower from Kingston Public Library. I think I spent half my childhood in the library. It meant so much to me to borrow books every week. It gives me such joy now to know that I’m currently the most borrowed author in British libraries. In those other autobiographies people mention maybe six favourites, or select their top ten fiction characters. I can’t choose! I feel as if I’m juggling my way through thousands of books, standing in a stadium jam-packed with fiction characters. They’re all waving at me and mouthing, Pick me! Pick me! I’ll pick Enid Blyton first. She wasn’t ever my favourite author but she got me reading. I pored over Pookie the white rabbit and the Shelf Animal books, but I couldn’t work out what each word said. Then I went to school in Lewisham and learned that the c-a-t sat on the m-a-t, but I didn’t really call that reading because it was so slow and laborious and there wasn’t a real story. I can’t remember the magic moment when it all came together and I stopped stabbing the words with my finger and muttering each sound.
