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.

A lot of my characters are underdogs or sad or lonely, but I had a comfortable, golden sort of childhood.

Maurice Sendak is the daddy of them all when it comes to picture books - the words, the rhythm, the psychology, the design.

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.

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older.

As a boy, I devoured comics but never saw what we now describe as a picture book.

The first things I remember drawing were battles - big sheets of paper covered in terrible scenes of carnage - though when you looked closely there were little jokes and speech bubbles and odd things going on in the background.