With Halloween just around the corner, who better to take part in our 5-4-3-2-1 feature than Claire Barker, author of Knitbone Pepper And The Ghost Dog (published by Usborne)?

Books you’d save from a burning bookcase

1) Roald Dahl –Danny, Champion of the World. The first book that made me sit up and pay attention. I will never look a raisin in the same way again.
2) The QI Book of The Dead. Very, very interesting dead people.
3) Patrick Suskind – Perfume. Brilliant, dark, poisonous, frightening, addictive.
4) Terry Pratchett – Mort. Death has a horse called Binky: what’s not to love?
5) Childhood copy of Tales from Shakespeare, illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Full of war, blood and pretty frocks

Authors you’d want with you if you were stranded on a desert island.

1) William Blake
2) Oscar Wilde
3) Neil Gaiman
4) AA Milne

TV shows you can watch all day long

1) Black Books. Bookshop + wine + bad behaviour = perfection.
2) Old re-runs of River Cottage, the early ones when Hugh is clearly mad; e...