As long as I can remember I have been surrounded by books. Certainly I was read to every night as a child, and most often these books were the same books that my own mother had read when she was young. They were usually fantastical in nature - as most children's books are - but rather than involving the usual 'Disneyfied' talking animals and magic dancing furniture, they were stories about children going to other worlds; they were stories that didn't dumb down or were patronizing in any way. Unlike the way we see children's books now, these works had very few illustrations in them, and when th more...
