Book doctor: What can I read to improve my writing?

All aspiring writers need to be magpie-like in their reading, and both classic and contemporary novels can provide a rich source of inspiration
Be a magpie and pick up 'bright shiny things' from other people's books to inspire your own writing. Photograph: SDM Images/Alamy

I am 11 years old. I like reading and am interested in what books it would be good for me to read to improve my writing skills.

As your question suggests, reading and writing are very closely linked so what you read will influence what you write and how you think. Philip Pullman, author of the award winning trilogy His Dark Materials makes no apology for saying that he takes ideas or "bright shiny things" as he calls them from all sorts of places and, most particularly, from other people's books. He describes it not as stealing but as being a magpie picking up what appeals and making it his own.

In The Child That Books Built, his account of his own reading history as a child, Francis Spufford describes the impact of reading. He says, "the words we take into ourselves help to shape us…They build and stretch and build again the chambers of our imagination." Without being a reader, some of that imagination and vocabulary would be missing.

However, which books will work best for you individually will partly depend on your own taste in reading; we each get the most out of books that affect us powerfully and it will be worth finding authors whose work you really enjoy. Good writing can be defined in many ways.

Obvious choices for influences to imitate are the classics. They provide a rich source of storytelling in a language that reaches many readers, which is why they have lasted so long. Among those, there are titles that follow traditional storytelling paths such as Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden as well as books that break down imaginative and linguistic boundaries such as Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Writers of more recent classics, such as Rosemary Sutcliff whose historical fiction includes The Eagle of the Ninth and Warrior Scarlet, and Dick King Smith, author of the bestselling The Sheep-Pig, among many other animal stories, also have readily identifiable styles which easily influence their readers when they come to write themselves.

Although often maligned, contemporary writers, too, provide a rich source of input. Patrick Ness in A Monster Calls and the Chaos Walking trilogy, Anne Fine in Goggle-Eyes and Roddy Doyle in A Greyhound of a Girl are just a few examples.