'WHEN CHILDREN LOOK at screens, what they see is very limited. Fiction takes story to a deeper level, it shows how people tick. A television or film screen can show a princess kissing a frog, but a book can explain why,' says Anne Fine.
The leading British children's author may be better known for the film adaptation of her novel Madame Doubtfire starring Robin Williams. But it is the power of the book that she most passionately believes in.
Fine's own books have a world-wide following and in recognition of her work she was awarded an OBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in 2003 for services to literature. She has been invited to Hong Kong by local book sellers Paddyfields, supported by her publishers Penguin and Random House, as the last stop on a tour of Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.
During her first visit to Hong Kong this week she has given talks to students at international and local schools and to other students, teachers and parents at the British Council.
With a number of other UK authors, she is concerned that books can be distorted if the focus shifts from the appreciation and enjoyment of books and texts to analysis and compartmentalisation.
'The National Curriculum [in England and Wales], for example, narrowed the way in which people used books. Teachers lost their confidence and got nervous. There seemed to be more emphasis on looking at extracts rather than understanding the need to read books all the way through,' she says.