Comics and graphic novels
My hero: Dennis the Menace by Steven Butler
Dennis taught me that it didn't matter if I hated books. He became the helping hand between being a non-reader and the children's author I am today
I was a miserably illiterate child. Riddled with it. Stuffed full of the inability to read or write.
It wasn't just that I was extremely poor at the basics of the English language, I despised it. Books were a threatening source of stress and classroom embarrassment. Steven Butler wanted NOTHING to do with books.
Cue the little boy in the red-and-black stripy jumper. When Dennis the Menace first came into my childhood I was about eight and my hatred of books had reached such a level that I refused to even have them in my bedroom. I had already squeezed every present under the Christmas tree and knew that my parents had snuck a book into my pile. There's no mistaking the feel of a gift-wrapped book.
When I unwrapped the Beano annual and came face to face with the boy in his iconic stripes for the first time, I had no idea what a life-long friend the character would become. Dennis taught me that it didn't matter if I hated books. Books were for losers, and reading was boring. In no time I fell in love with his anarchic stories, became a comic kid and felt cool for the first time in my life.
What my little brain hadn't caught on to was the fact that through Dennis's comics, I was fast becoming a greatly improved reader. Writing inserted among zany pictures lost its threat, and Dennis became the helping hand between being a non-reader and the children's author I am today.
Writing Dennis for a new generation of children has been a privilege and the funniest of games. I love watching a child frantically turning the page to read more about how boring books are. It's the perfect trick.
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