The Reading Room

• Name: Jeremy Strong
• Date of Birth: November 18th 1949
• Place of Birth: Eltham London
• Previous Jobs: Head Teacher, Teacher, Caretaker, Strawberry Picker, Jam Doughnut Stuffer (yes, really!)
• Favourite children's authors: Michael Rosen, Lauren Child, Rudyard Kipling, A.A.Milne.
• Influences: Comics - like The Beano and writers like A.A Milne and Donald Bissett.
• Recent Titles: The Battle for Christmas
and Invasion of the Christmas Puddings
• Website: www.jeremystrong.co.uk
• See all titles from Jeremy

Christmas - I love it and hate it. I love all the razzmatazz - the decorations and the tree especially. When I was a child my big brother and I used to hang up all the paper decorations until the front room was so full of garlands it's a miracle we didn't bring the ceiling crashing down.

I can even remember that we used to have real tiny candles on the Christmas tree - alight! It was very pretty. I loved buying prezzies and wondering what to give people. One Christmas I decided I'd give my Mum a watch. I?d seen one for £10.00. I would have had to save my pocket money for about six months to be able to buy it.

So what happened was that I thought about giving her the watch but I actually gave her some chocolates instead, which cost about £1.00! After all, it's the thought that counts. Another time I was desperately hoping to get a watch myself from my parents. On the day they handed me a large and very heavy present and my heart sank. It certainly was not a watch. When I opened it up I found a brick! And strapped to the brick was, guess what? A watch - my best watch ever - brilliant!

And then of course there are the things I hate about Christmas. First of all I don?t like seeing Christmas cards for sale in September. I don-t like the huge amounts of money that are spent either. One of the best Christmases I had was when we decided there should be a limit of £5.00 for every gift. It meant that everyone got some thoughtful and often funny prezzies. My favourite was a clockwork nun that spat red hot sparks out of her mouth as she waddled along the table top. She was called Nunzilla!

But what I hate most of all without a doubt is Christmas Pudding. I mean, what kind of nasty, evil person invented that black, gooey, grungy, stinking, stodgy mess? And Christmas Cake is almost as bad. Yuk! If I ever become Prime Minister I shall ban Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake forever!

Now you know why I wrote Invasion of the Christmas Puddings!

Merry Christmas!

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Karate princesses, seasick pirates and demon vacuum cleaners... Where else could these characters spring from but the playground that is the quirky imagination of award-winning Jeremy Strong?

Born in Eltham in 1949, Jeremy once worked in a bakery putting the jam into doughnuts, now he says he puts the jam into stories instead! He thinks his writing has been influenced most of all by Spike Milligan, but also by falling on his head when he was three years old. He was not allowed to read comics as a child, and consequently discovered The Beano at the formative age of sixteen.

Jeremy Strong?s ideas come from everywhere - his childhood, his children, over-hearing conversations, something he sees - and he constantly makes notes. Admitting that his sense of humour got stuck at the age of ten Jeremy says "When I was about eighteen I started writing very serious stories for adults, but none of them were published. By the time I was twenty-one I was writing stories for children and I quickly realised I loved writing funny stories and making people laugh."