Michael Morpurgo: my favourite children's books As a young child my attention span was, as I remember it, rather short. Not sure I've changed that much! So when it came to stories I liked them heavily illustrated or short, or both. They had to rattle along briskly and be filled with excitement and adventure. I loved the way pictures and words would fuse and resonate in my head long after the story was over. I'm sure the stories my mother read to me at bedtime were the most formative. She loved Kipling's Just So Stories in particular and I learnt to love the tune, rhythm and fun of them. Oscar Wilde's short stories "The Selfish Giant" and "The Happy Prince" were also firm favourites of hers, and I have loved them ever since. And she'd often read the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, especially The Little Match Girl. I found it too sad altogether, I remember, and never wanted to hear it again. I can just about cope with it now! Andersen's The Emperor's New Clothes tickled me pink, but I never realised how good it was until I grew up and understood more about human frailty, idiocy and hypocrisy. Mr Aesop I loved too, again not realising at the time that these were anything but animal stories. It was years until I realised they were about us! Poems were short too, so I loved them as well. Narrative poems, like William Cowper's "John Gilpin," W S Gilbert's "The Yarn of the Nancy Bell," and of course Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Poems by Lear, Kipling (again), De la Mare, Wordsworth and Shakespeare - all from a collection called Come Hither - still echo in my head even now. So reading, and being read to, was a sheer joy for me in those early days. But when I first went unwillingly to school, to St Matthias in the Warwick Road, stories were at once hijacked by teachers, who simply wanted to use them for punctuation, spelling and comprehension lessons. The magic of words, the music in them and the fun, died. I took to reading comics where there were fewer words, where action was fast and furious, funny and fantastical. I read The Beano and The Dandy and the Eagle avidly. And I read the great classics in picture form in a series called Classics Illustrated. Books printed with words became alarming to me, all except for Enid Blyton's Famous Five novels, maybe because they were forbidden - probably because they were thought to be too easily enjoyable, and that was true. They rollicked along, practically turning the page for me. Then, at about nine or 10, I picked up Treasure Island and read it again and again. There were enough illustrations to keep me happy, but it was the writing that held my attention. Stevenson's words could evoke time and place and people so well that I felt myself living the story. I was Jim Hawkins on the deck of The Hispaniola, hiding in the apple barrel, overhearing the dastardly Long John Silver's plans for mutiny and murder. Robert Louis Stevenson has been my hero-writer ever since. Poet, travel writer, children's writer, novelist - RLS was a towering genius, and a good man too. Michael Morpurgo's A Medal for Leroy (Harper Collins Children's Books) is available from Telegraph Books for £11.99 (plus £1.35 p&p). Homecoming (Walker Books) is available for £5.99 (plus £1.35 p&p).