One of the books that has had an impact on my life is The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. It’s one of those books whose meaning changes as you grow and mature, and the best part is that this book never gets boring. I first read it when I was 5 or 6 and thought it was a story about a boy who rescues two princesses with his sidekick. Classic fairytale. But when I went back to it several years later, I noticed little details about the book I hadn’t seen before. For example, the monster that makes a lot of noise is called DYNNE (same pronunciation as the word “din,” a word that I obviously didn’t know at the age of 6.) I re-read it a third time and realized the demon called Trivium got his name because he makes Milo and Tock do repetitive, trivial tasks!

The Calvin and Hobbes comics were a really big part of my life when I was in primary school. Bill Watterson has a distinctly adult style of writing dialogue, which contrasts with the drawings of a boy and his pretend tiger friend. I love the mix of childish imagination and complex language. Calvin and Hobbes made me read with a dictionary at hand, as I often had to search up words in order to understand the punchline of the comic, so it was actually a really educational read disguised as a children’s comic.

I love a handful of series, with Harry Potter being one of my favourites, naturally. My introduction to Harry Potter and his fantastical wizarding world was my transition from children’s books into more young adult/teen books and series. I devoured these books over the course of a couple of weeks and was left with a hole in my heart when I realised I was finished.

After Harry Potter, I delved into His Dark Materials trilogy, which is a series that evolves with you, much like The Phantom Tollbooth. At first, I didn’t pick up on much of the message about Christianity and how Pullman criticizes it, however, looking back, I can connect a lot of things in Lyra’s world to ours. For example, the whole concept of the severing dæmons from their children at Bolvangar is basically equivalent to genital mutilation in our world, which gave me a deeper sense of what dæmons meant to the characters in Lyra’s world – that they are not just mere pets, but physical extensions of their person and soul.

My English teacher introduced me to a bunch of wonderful new authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Margaret Atwood. My favourite book of Ishiguro’s (although I love many of them) is the Buried Giant, which is a fantasy novel with all the elements of a high fantasy book – dragons, horses, knights, a quest – yet there is an underlying unease throughout the book which makes the story seem slightly off, as if it is not just a tale of the knight slaying the evil dragon. Also, the main characters are just wonderfully odd. They’re an old couple who can barely walk, let alone run, such a surprising and refreshing change from the typical young, spirited main character of most fantasy novels.