As a boy, author Pete Johnson read and re-read Dodie Smith’s classic canine tale, then her coming-of-age novel I Capture the Castle – then he wrote her a letter of appreciation which turned into a 25-year correspondence and inspired him to become a writer

Martin Stewart knew he wanted to be a writer but didn’t know what kind – until he read Philip Pullman’s elegant, imaginative and insightful masterwork

Reading HE Marshall’s Our Island Story as a 10-year-old changed the way children’s author Kevin Crossley-Holland thought about the world forever

At eight years old, the very last thing Gavin Puckett wanted to do in his spare time was read a book – reading was tedious and to be done at school. Then he discovered Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and everything changed

A voracious child reader who fell off the wagon as teenager, Erin Lange, the author of Butter, remembers how reading Harry Potter in a coffee shop as an adult turned her back onto reading… and writing

A 10-year-old Philip Womack had a Eureka moment reading The Iliad by Homer, transported all the way back to the Trojan War and experiencing the unique connection to the past that storytelling brings

Epic fantasy author Brandon Sanderson thought he’d outgrown reading at the age of 11, until his teacher handed him Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane – and everything changed

A teenage girl explains how libraries helped her manage the transition from primary to secondary school, and the librarians encouraged her to become the reading fanatic she is today

A teenage boy describes the ‘eureka moment’ when he realised books (at least some books) could be as gripping as YouTube on his tablet, in the first of our new eureka reads series