Chris Riddell

I would start with...

where I started actually, Kate, which was with a reading scheme book.

And this was, you know, my vehicle when I was at school, primary school here in the UK.

This was the way that we were being taught to read.

And I was taught to read with a series of books called the Keyword Reading Scheme.

And the principal characters were Peter and Jake.

And they were two lovely white children living in a 1950s world with mummy.

Daddy would sort of go off to work.

And they would have adventures in very sort of simple sentences with vocabulary repeated so that you could learn to read.

And they were sort of linked.

So you would start with Peter and Jane 1A,

And then on the cover, you would see Peter and Jane having tea with mummy.

And then once you'd mastered that, you'd go to 1B and then 1C and then 2B and 2C.

You'd move up this level of difficulty as you read about Peter and Jane's wonderful adventures, which were usually things like having a picnic or sort of going to the seaside, you know, those sort of things.

And I had managed to get to about Peter and Jane 2B.

And it wasn't easy for me.

I wasn't a natural reader.

I wasn't one of these kids who read when they were sort of, you know, two years old.

You know, I was remedial, I think, in that stage.

And I was struggling with this difficult skill, learning to read.