Matthew Kneale is the award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction, including English passengers, which won the Whitbread Book Award. He shares the books that have changed his life.

As a child I loved the Tintin books — for their adventures, their characters and their stylish illustrations. Though Hergé visited almost none of the faraway places he drew, he captured (捕捉) them perfectly. His images, whether of Peru, Arabia, India or China, stayed with me and later, when I became a keen traveler, Tintin’s destinations were the places that I most wanted to reach. I never saw them all, needless to say, but I got to quite a few.

This was another book I loved as a child — the story of a boy who is bored staying with his grandparents, when he runs into Stig, a friendly Stone Age man. When my father read it to my sister and me, I was already fascinated by history and I loved the way the book captured the mystery of our distant, unrecorded past. Its charm stayed with me and much later I spent many a weekend driving around Britain, getting lost on small country roads, looking for prehistoric tombs and stone circles. There’s something breathtaking about these places, which are often in extraordinary locations.

When I first saw Rome, aged eight, I was amazed by the city’s layers of history and this same magic led me to come and live here, 20 years ago. I first read I Claudius as a teenager and was attracted by the story of friendly, stammering, ridiculed Claudius, who grows up in the vipers’ nest of Rome’s imperial family and who, against all the odds, as his relatives destroy one another, survives and rises. Graves, a fine scholar, has a talent for making the past spring to life, in all its nastiness and wonder. In my own writing, fiction and non-fiction, I’ve tried to follow his example — to make history shocked, as it should do.

The Best Books at the Best Prices

Looking for fun, affordable gifts? Browse our amazing selection of children’s books. All for under  10.

Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed

By Eileen Christelow

 6.99

As soon as they say “Good night” to their mother, the five little monkeys start to jump on their bed. But trouble lies ahead as, one by one, they fall off and hurt themselves.

Eileen Christelow has written and drawn pictures for numerous best-selling picture books including Letters From a Desperate Dog, The Desperate Dog Writes Again and Vote! She lives with her husband in Dummerston, Vermont, and you can learn more about her life and work on her website,     www. christelow. com     and on www. fivelittlemonkeys. com.

The Giver   By Lois lowry

 9.99

In this Newbery Medal-winning classic, 12-year-old Jonas lives in a seemingly ideal world. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver does he begin to understand the dark secrets behind his fragile community.

Lois Lowry is the author of more than thirty books for young adults, including the popular Anastasia Krupnik series. She has received countless honors. She received Newbery Medals for two of her novels, Number the Stars and The Giver. Her first novel, A Summer to Die, was awarded the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award. To learn more about Lois Lowry, see her website at www. loislowry. com.

Learn With Homer

Price: Free

Grade level: Pre-K, K

Skill: Comprehension, Phonics (拼读法)

Device: iPad

It’s a learn-to-read app for kids aged 3 to 6 that includes drawing, voice recording, stories, songs, and more, along with more traditional phonics exercises.

This app can be helpful for kids who have speech production problems and language organization problems.

Inspiration Maps

Price: $ 9.99

Grade level: 4th and above

Skill: Comprehension, Writing

Device: iPad

Inspiration Maps is a mind-mapping tool that helps kids visually (视觉上) organize ideas. They can create maps, organizers, brainstorms, and text outlines. Outlines can be changed to maps, and maps can be changed to outlines. Users can share creations by emailing, printing, or saving to iTunes, Dropbox, Photos, or the app (as PDF or PNG files) . The Lite version (简化版本),which is free, lets kids create up to five mind maps with no sharing choices.

Aesop’s Quest

Price: $ 0.99

Skill: Comprehension

Grade level: 2nd, 3rd, 4th

Device: iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch

Aesop’s Quest, based on Aesop’s Fables, is a learning game where the student must remember parts of a story to complete a level. At the end of each story level, the student is rewarded with tests. After solving the tests, the story is complete and the child can continue to the next story.

Developed together with the Virginia Department of Education.

Light Sail

Grade level: Pre-K, K, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and above

Price: Free

Skill: Comprehension

Device: iPad

Light Sail is an e-reading platform that helps teachers support their students’ independent reading. Students can use Light Sail to check out text from their schools’ online libraries and read the books directly on their iPad. As students progress through a book, questions appear to check their comprehension. As students complete these assessments (评定), they earn prizes.