Anthony Browne

Picture books are for everybody at any age, not books to be left behind as we grow older. The best ones leave a tantalising gap between the pictures and the words, a gap that is filled by the reader's imagination, adding so much to the excitement of reading a 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.

To ask questions can become the laziest and wobbliest occupation of a mind, but when you must yourself answer the problem that you have posed, you will meditate your question with care and frame it with precision.