Puffin authors on why they love reading with their kids

What is your favourite thing to do with your kids?

Nick Mohammed: I love making up songs/raps (usually which don't make any sense) and then singing them to my little boy as I wheel him through the air like it's his theme tune!

Chris Bradford: Climbing our local ‘mountain’. It’s a very steep hill really, but the boys have been scaling it since they were two years old. They’re like two mountain goats bounding up the slope, especially when I’ve told them there’s a chocolate button bush at the top!

Jeremy Strong: Bedtime story - cuddling up and reading favourite books and talking about the pictures.

What was your favourite thing to do with your dad when you were little?

NM: Show him - often quite lame - magic tricks.

CB: There was a deep pit in our nearby woods. My dad would jimmy up a ‘death slide’ with a length of rope, a pulley and a stick over the pit and I’d zoom across at lethal speeds. It was totally dangerous, totally unsafe and totally amazing!

JS: Sometimes I would stay at a friend’s house all day and when Dad collected me I would pretend to be asleep in the back of the car so that he would carry me upstairs and put me to bed.

What is your favourite book to read with your kids?

NM: There's a book called Hug by Jez Alborough that I love reading to Fin. I think he enjoys it too!

CB: For my older son (6) we love Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Reading this through his eyes, I now realise how magical and well-written it is and the pictures add another spell-binding dimension. For my younger son (4), The Cat In The Hat is a winner. So simple yet so funny and educational all at the same crazy time!

JS: Father Fox’s Pennyrhymes by Clyde Watson. It’s a fabulous book full of modern nursery rhymes about a family of foxes. The illustrations are so warm and wonderfully engaging. My children absolutely love it