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.

I think there's something about studying a book which will kill it if you're not careful.

I'm still not sure I want to be a writer. I think of myself as a storyteller more.

Being his real brother I could feel I live in his shadows, but I never have and I do not now. I live in his glow.

He never reckoned much to schooling and that. He said you could learn most what was worth knowing from keeping your eyes and ears peeled. Best way of learning, he always said, was doing.

Perhaps it is partly that we need to love books ourselves as parents, grandparents and teachers in order to pass on that passion for stories to our children. It's not about testing and reading schemes, but about loving stories and passing on that passion to our children.

Books that kids read should be about what is going on in the world.