Emma Donoghue: ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull blew my tiny mind’

The Room author on adoring Alan Garner, inspirational Sylvia Plath and the wisdom of Terry Pratchett

My earliest reading memory
We had a big crack-spined hardback of Hilda Boswell’s illustrated Treasury of Children’s Stories that had survived my seven siblings to come down to me. For years, whenever my mother asked which bedtime story I’d like out of the Treasury, I demanded Pinkel and the Witch, a folk tale recorded in the 1850s. My mother was so bored of it she would groan and beg me to pick something else, but she always caved. I don’t know why this tale about a risk-loving boy thief and the scary/seductive witch whose island he repeatedly sneaks on to gripped me like nothing else. But the reason I remember it so vividly is the implicit lesson I learned from my mother: give those you love what they crave, rather than what you think they should want. I try to treat my readers the same way.

My favourite book growing up
Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes, which I realise now was not only about an alternative family (including all-but-spelled-out lesbian couple) but was probably the first thing I read that said you should follow your dreams, a message children get from all sides today but didn’t so much then. Those penniless little tough cookies scrabbling to make careers in the arts were my role models.

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