You’ve written books both for very young children and for teenagers.  For which age range are the books you’re choosing today?

My love is for teenage books. That is my passion. I only accidentally wrote for children. It’s much, much harder writing for young children.

Why?

First of all, you have a lot more rules to follow. Each book has to be 32 pages long. You’re limited in your vocabulary, you’re limited in your sentence structure, and you’re limited in how many characters there are and what they can understand. I never want to be preachy, I never try to jam a lesson down anybody’s throat. I try to hit an issue that is universal, and not just for a singular child. I always, always take my hint from something that I see or hear. I don’t use my imagination at all. I wait until I see or hear something and then I go, “Wow, that would make a perfect book”. But you have to be very, very careful what you say and how you say it, especially since this business of political correctness. Everybody has become so touchy – to the point of ridiculousness.

You find you can’t write what you want to any more?

Very often, yes. The last book I wrote, Chester Raccoon and an Acorn Full of Memories, should be in every school and every home in the world. Every child loses someone or something – whether it’s a pet or a friend or someone at their school. And they’re terrified. They don’t understand. In this book, Chester Raccoon loses Skiddil Squirrel. Mrs Raccoon, instead of talking about death, teaches Chester how to make a memory. And it has been miraculous in what it’s done for kids. It’s just been wonderful. But some stores won't place it on their shelves because they’re afraid of the subject matter. With older kids, it’s a lot easier – though I write historic fiction, so again I’m locked in. I have to deal with historic facts, not just fantasies.

Tell me about the books you’ve selected.

It was very hard to bring it down to five. I’m from a family – an extended family – that is so bound up in literature. I went from one home with a library to visiting an uncle’s home with a massive library, to a grandfather’s home with another. I was just so blessed in that. But when I was doing this for FiveBooks I did a bit of soul-searching. I learned a bit about myself. I realised that all the books I loved and read more than once were about someone who had a problem. They had to climb out of their situation. The books were about very strong people who made it on their own and taught the people around them. I had to do the same thing. I was reading books about myself – and I never realised that before.

Do you want to talk about what happened to you?

I was born disabled, with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis [JRA]. When you have a disability and you’re young, you hide it as much as you can from other children. When you’re in pain, you learn to fake it. You become a very good actress because you don’t want anybody to know you’re different. For example, when everyone was walking home I would lie and say, “I have a piano lesson”. And then I would sit on the ground and shriek because I was in so much pain. I would wait for it to mellow out again, until I could walk, and then I would get up and walk home. In some ways it was a very lonely life.

It sounds heartbreaking.

It’s hard. In September I had my 29th surgery. It was to replace a bone in my thumb. There are times I just want to say, “Enough is enough!” But you can’t. You just keep going.