Growing up as a child I lost myself in the pages of books. They became my closest friends even before I started school. For me, they weren’t simple words on a page, they were faraway lands with characters I either fell in love with or hated as I joined them in adventures I could only dream of. Hiding from the Witch in the Chronicles of Narnia, drinking ginger beer and eating sandwiches with the Famous Five, or playing in the rubble in The Silver Sword. These words never stopped whispering to me when I closed the book and read those two last words: THE END. In my mind, the adventures carried on.

I always loved the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Feeling sorry for the minstrel who had been so cruelly treated after he piped away the rats, at the same time feeling sorry for the pain of the parents who had lost their children.