Writer

What excites me about picture books is the gap between pictures and words. Sometimes the pictures can tell a slightly different story or tell more about the story, about how someone is thinking or feeling.

As a child, I'd always liked cowboys and Indians stories where there were two layers - gruesome in the foreground but funny in the background.

I don't like narrowing my readers down - there's not a particular age or gender or nationality. I suppose I'm aiming at the child I was.

Force me to choose my best book, and I always come back to 'Gorilla.' It was the first time I felt I understood what picture books could do.

Picture books are being marginalised. I get the feeling children are being pushed away from picture books earlier and earlier and being told to look at 'proper' books, which means books without pictures.

Having a memoir and a retrospective of your work running almost simultaneously when you're still alive does feel a bit posthumous.

Most of the day I work standing up, as I once read somewhere that it's the best position for the back.

I had just been promoted to the first rugby team. It was a perfect, wonderful coming of age. My brother was already in the team, and my father had come to watch us. We went home, and my father died in front of me. Horribly, in about half an hour. He had a heart attack.

The first thing I put down on paper is a storyboard, like a film director.

Inspiring passion in children for books, and the world of imagination and creativity fuelled by them, is a fundamental reason for why the Children's Laureate post exists.

My dad never decided what he wanted to do; at times he fought in the army, was a teacher, a boxer, a light engineer, and a then a publican. My mum was a traditional housewife and mother. They showed my brother and I unconditional love.

I'm impressed by the way some illustrators develop their images on computers, but it's too late for me to start, and I'm still in love with paper and paint and pencils.

Never forget that children are at the heart of everything we do. Respect them, listen to them, talk to them as equals, and care about them.

I've always felt that I was a bit of an outsider to the British children's-book illustration scene, because I don't work in line and wash.

From 17 to 21, I was obsessed by sport and art. In art, I loved the pre-Raphaelites and Rembrandt first. Then I discovered Salvador Dali, and it was like finding something I already knew.

I find it incredible and outrageous that public and school libraries are being forced to close - we'll all pay the price in the long term.

Stories come to me in mysterious ways, more like dreams than reasoned creations.

Although I have two good Anglepoise lights, I much prefer to work by daylight.

When I was a boy, I was a worrier, and so was my son, Joe. I used to tell him that worrying meant he had an imagination and that one day he'd be pleased.

Most people lose their natural creativity at about five or six - but not me.