Chris Riddell

coiled tight round their hoards, don't understand art.

But the snake oil minions, who whisper in their ears as they sleep, they fear it.

Art can capture souls they bought and paid for.

If you want to slay dragons, make art.

So that was my poem for Jack.

I hope that he will make films and express himself artistically and possibly

you know, sort of make his mark on the world through art rather than breaking windows.

As sharp as I can make it.

My pleasure.

Thank you.

I'm reading it and reading it and I'm going, oh no.

It's taken up half my heart, you know.

Goodness, I think principally, Kate, I'm an illustrator.

And the other things I do, I think, are just to generate material for me to illustrate.

I'm not sure I would ever call myself a novelist, even less so a poet, but maybe a cartoonist, certainly, a satirist after a fashion.

But I think principally what I love doing is illustrating.

I love the way that images interact with words in these amazing things we call

I think that reading is a very...

extraordinary process isn't it it's something that we rather take for granted i mean once we we learn to decode words on a page and we set off on our sort of careers you know at school reading through different stages but there's something extraordinary about reading when when one sits and starts to analyze it and it's the way in which you hear a voice in your head it's a direct form of communication it's an extraordinary sort of repository of of

ideas and thoughts from people who may no longer be alive, and they can speak directly to us.