BEST AUTHOR BEST : CRESSIDA COWELL [2]

.-  WHAT BOOKS are on your night stand?

'' Is a River Alive?,'' by Robert Macfarlane; '' In Writing,'' by Hattie Crisell; '' Big Magic,'' by Elizabeth Gilbert; '' Three Days in June,'' by Anne Tyler ; and lots of cookery books.

I love reading a recipe book before bed.

.-  How do you organize your books?

In my writing shed I have lots of research books, about nature or animals, that are helpful to my illustrations.

In my sitting room I have hardbacks, lovely old copies with pretty jackets.

In the bathroom I have paperbacks, because it's tough old life being read in the bath.

In my bedroom I have whatever I am reading at the time, and Books I want to read in the future, and cookery books.

.-  The books have inspired a section of a theme park in Orlando. Were you a theme-park-goer before visiting this one?

No ! But I loved it, particularly meeting Hiccup and Toothless, and the stage show.

As a child who grew up longing to meet a dragon, it was very moving to think how much pleasure this theme park was going to give children and families in the future.

.-  You're organizing a dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?

Shakespeare, George Eliot and Homer, if such a person ever existed [ It's a bit contentious, that one ].

You have to invite the dead ones. Although one of the many wonderful things about reading is that this is what you're already doing.

You are having a dinner party with people who died, sometimes hundreds or even thousands of years ago, and whose voices and feelings and intelligence and opinions are all captured in the extraordinarily brilliant and irreplaceable technology that is a book.

Now that really is magic.

The World Students Society thanks The New York Times.