The Biblio Files 1: Rosemary Clarke

Each month we'll be taking you behind the scenes at Book House and asking Booktrusters from across the organisation five questions.

This month: Rosemary Clarke MBE

Who are you?

I am Rosemary Clarke, Director of Programmes.

Can you remember the first book you read by yourself?

It was The Adventures of Robin Hood. It was given as a present to my little brother - he was five and couldn't read, and I was dying to get my hands on this book. I swapped him one of my presents for that book and said I would read the stories to him. I was seven. The last story where Robin shoots his arrow into the forest to mark where he'll be buried used to make me cry until I was sick.

What book would you share with the world?

That's such a hard question to answer! Just one? But they all do different things. A book we read when my children were little was Eric Carle's The Bad Tempered Ladybird, not nearly as famous as The Hungry Caterpillar, but it was our favourite. It's about this very bad-tempered out-of-sorts ladybird who wants to pick fights with absolutely everybody. Throughout the book, she goes through a series of challenges, like picking a fight with a stag beetle - she picks on bigger and bigger creatures until she picks on a whale. It's a lovely story and the slap of the tale at the end is just fantastic. That book is still a treasure in our house.

What has been your favourite moment so far working for Booktrust?

When we moved from one baby pack to three baby packs was a huge moment. We were running out of funding and were hoping to get a commitment to look after the baby pack. We had to go for a bigger offer and see if that would be attractive to funders. And it was. So we went from one pack to three packs and that was an enormously memorable moment. I remember when we were designing the treasure chest pack - it was an inspired idea, to call it a treasure chest, because that's what we were trying to do… get people to treasure books. We got so many letters about that pack saying, 'He takes it on holiday with him…' 'He keeps everything precious he has in that box' 'He keeps it under his bed.' It was an inspired idea.

What is the most important part of your role?

A director's job is to have a clear idea of the direction of travel and be a good communicator. So if there's a barrier, my joining people up together can be instrumental in removing it. I see myself as a fixer, as somebody who has a clear idea of what we need to be doing and how we should be going about it. The other thing is having the ability to build an excellent team around you. You don't have to be good at everything but when you have a team around you who are good at everything, you can defer to their expertise.

Tweet Rosemary: @rosemaryclarke