Top Five

Cool trousers, lads!

I love lists! I have lots of to-do lists on the go all the time and often lie awake compiling my list of eight favourite pieces of music just in case I'm ever invited onto Desert Island Discs (not very likely, I admit,  but  there's no harm in being prepared. My selections vary over time but always include Aretha Franklin - Say a Little Prayer for Me, Tracy Chapman -  Fast Car, The Buzzcocks - Ever Fallen in Love With Someone and Booker T and the MGs - Green Onions). I often worry I should include some classical music to show that I'm cultured. But I'm not. So I can't!

A few weeks ago Bookbabblers - a great website all about children's and YA books,  full of author interviews and reviews -  invited me to come up with a list of five favourite books I loved when I was a kid. I cheated shamelessly by including two complete series and all the Rupert Bear annuals since the beginning of time. Even so, it was torture to whittle my list down to five. I've been thinking of all the fabulous books I left out ever since: The Family from One End Street, Five Children and It, The Worst Witch, Watership Down, The Wool-pack, The Secret Garden, The Borrowers, I Capture the Castle . . . the list goes on and on.

Here's the five that did make it onto my Bookbabblers list and also a Q and A.

What would be in your Top Five?