'A beautiful way to talk to children'

‘When you read as a child you are hungry for ideas and for books and for stories like no other time in your life and I think we have such a duty not to offer the hungry anything that is thin, or vapid or fishy or complacent or poorly thought out or lazy or careless. I am very happy to belong to a community that rises to that call...

Speaking about her latest children's novel Impossible Creatures, where all the creatures from myth and legend live on an archipelago. ‘It is about these creatures, it is about a cornucopia of wonder and about the idea of what it would be like, if it was really real... Fantasy can be such a beautiful way to talk to children about the biggest question of what it means to be alive...'

The speech, which ended the conference, concluded on a rallying call to all those in the book industry who, Rundell believes, are ‘members of this great chorus, singing this song which has been sung since at least [Homer's] Odyssey... and each generation sings it down to the next. People who make books and produce books and sell books, review books and promote books, they take that song and they make it into a roar'.

Katherine Rundell, author of six children's novels, including Rooftoppers, which won the Waterstones Children's Book Prize in 2014, The Explorer, which won the Costa Children's Book Award and recently published Impossible Creatures, and two anthologies, at the Bookseller's Children's conference, in the Bookseller.