The Reading Room

• Name: Geraldine McCaughrean
• Date of Birth: 6th June 1951
• Place of Birth: Enfield, North London
• Lives: Berkshire, UK
• Featured Title: Peter Pan in Scarlet
• Awards: Carnegie Medal, Whitbread Award,
  Guardian Children's Fiction Award.
• Website: Click to here visit
• Fan club: Click to here visit
• See all titles from Geraldine

I've just got back from a trip to Neverland. I won it, like one of those holidays you hear of people winning in magazines.

For this particular competition I had to write the outline for a story and a few sample pages. I entered for the fun of it (the only reason to write anything) and ? swipe me with a parrotful of peanuts! - I won. I won the chance to write the sequel to one of the most famous books in the world ? J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan. And it was the best fun ever.

There is something in that story to stir the blood of any reader ? at four, fourteen or forty-four. Barrie's invented world isn't somewhere nice and wholesome: people get killed. Peter isn't a good little boy - he's reckless and heartless, boastful and grubby. To quote from Peter Pan in Scarlet:

"In Neverland... play isn't play: it's real - which is wonderful and makes your brain spin zigger-zag behind your eyes and sends little jets of hotness through your stomach and steals the spit out of your mouth... It's the best of moments, and you know you will remember it forever. But, by Skylights, it's scary!"

When you find the place, you can belt on a sword, get out a treasure map and go on a quest. You don't need permission. You don't have to take along any wet-blanket grown-ups. You can get to grips with wild beasts, fight off ambushes, climb mountains in a blizzard. Fly. But the great thing is, it doesn't even have to be Barrie's Neverland ? or mine.

I reckon Neverland is where you go every time you pick up an adventure story. It is a circle without a perimeter, a square without corners, an island without bounds. Imagination? pushed it up from the bottom of the sea and into the daylight.

Books are the passport, but they are just paper and ink until you turn the first page and step into the shoes of the hero. After the book is finished, you can even go back there under cover of dark, with your eyes shut, inside the Tardis of your head. Tell me I'm wrong...

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Geraldine McCaughrean was born and educated in North London, the third and youngest child of a fireman and a teacher. She attended Christchurch College of Education but instead of teaching she chose to work for a magazine publishing house. In 1988 she became a full-time writer and since then,

Geraldine has written over 130 books and plays for both adults and children and has won the Carnegie Medal, Guardian Children's Fiction Award, Whitbread's Children's Book of the Year (three times in three decades), Smarties Bronze (four times), UK Readers' Association Award and she wrote the Blue Peter Book of the Year 2000.

Geraldine lives in Berkshire with her husband John and their daughter Ailsa.