Cassie McCullough

For some reason, when I was a kid, I really adored the works of James Herriot.

The vet from the north of England.

So my first submission would be All Creatures Great and Small.

Yeah, I don't know why, but I was just constantly drawn to those books and I just devoured them.

I loved them.

I remember scouring through secondhand bookstores, you know, getting the cheap paperbacks because there were quite a few in the series.

And for whatever reason, just the adventures of a Yorkshire vet just really...

This really drew me in.

It seems such a whimsical, magical world so far away from my own.

But there were just such universal elements that spoke to me for whatever reason, as a bit of an animal lover and someone who grew up in the country, you know.

That's right.

I suppose for adult fare, which is really what it was, it was actually fairly gentle and very inviting.

I just really loved them.

Closer to home, I loved Paul Jennings and his works of short stories.

I think the book that was the most impactful for me was Unbelievable.

In particular, there was a little story called The Busker.

It read like an amazing fable.

about a busker who wins the lottery essentially and tries to buy a lot of friends.

Basically, he's a lonely man who has a dog called Tiny and he's envious of the attention that his dog gets during their act.

And so when he wins the lottery, he neglects his dog, you know, and basically tries to sort of buy all these friends and it has a kind of very tragic ending.