It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

Always write your ideas down however silly or trivial they might seem. Keep a notebook with you at all times.

It is the child's understanding that teaches the adults the way of the future. They're still doing it today with modern technology.

Elephants are my favourite creatures and have been since I was a boy and my mother read Kipling's The Elephant's Child to me. It was loving elephants so much that made we want to write my own story with an elephant at the centre and its bond with a child.

A lot of children, like I did, move away from words because of the fear - which is something you have to take out of education: the fear of worrying about what marks you'll get, detention, worrying about letting people down, your parents, teachers.

Characters are the key to a good book. It took me several novels to comprehend that.

Unless you can be in a place yourself and go through the subject of your story yourself, the next best thing is not to read a book about it, or see a movie about it, it's to talk to the people who've been there.