Rather, children’s fiction necessitates distillation: at its best, it renders in their purest, most archetypal forms hope, hunger, joy, fear.  Think of children’s books as literary vodka.

And because at so many times in life, despite what we tell ourselves, adults are powerless too, we as adults must hasten to children's books to be reminded of what we have left to us, whenever we need to start all over again.

... how to read: how to lay aside scepticism and fashion and trust myself to a book. At the risk of sounding like a mad optimist: children's fiction can reteach you how to read with an open heart.

When you read children's books, you are given the space to read again as a child: to find your way back, back to the time when new discoveries came daily and when the world was colossol, before your imagination was trimmed and neatened, as if it were an optional extra.

But imagination is not and never has been optional: it is at the heart of everything, the thing that allows us to experience the world from the perspectives of others: the condition precedent of love itself.

But there are times in adult life - at least in mine - when the world has seemed blank and flat and without truth.

Children's novels, to me, spoke, and still speak, of hope. The say: look, this is what bravery looks like, This is what generosity looks like.

They say: bravery will matter, wit will matter, empathy will matter, love will matter. These things may or may not be true. I do not know. I hope they are. I think it is urgently necessary to hear them and to speak them.

I still find libraries astonishing: I still think they speak to our better instincts. The library remains one of the few places in the world where you don't have to buy anything, know anyone or believe anything to enter in. It's our most egalitarian space. If hope is the thing with feathers, then libraries are wings.