Emma Donoghue: ‘Jonathan Livingston Seagull blew my tiny mind’

My earliest reading memory

• Emma Donoghue
• The Guardian

We had a big crack-spined hardback of Hilda Boswell’s illustrated Treasury of Children’s Stories that had survived my seven siblings to come down to me.

For years, whenever my mother asked which bedtime story I’d like out of the Treasury, I demanded Pinkel and the Witch, a folk tale recorded in the 1850s.

My mother was so bored of it she would groan and beg me to pick something else, but…

• Emma Donoghue: ‘Jonathan…