Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My My cast away this week is the author and illustrator Mari Hedderwick. Her most

famous creation is a little red-haired character called Katie Morag, who in wellies in a kilt has skipped her way through

14 books and a 26-part TV series. Katie lives on the imaginary aisle of Struey with her parents

siblings, cousins, granny and prize-winning sheep,

Alicina. Like her Creator, she relishes the rhythms and freedoms particular to life on a

wee Scottish island, but that's where the similarities end.

The author was born and brought up an only child on the mainland of the lowlands.

She lost her father when she was just 12, and says she was never part of a close-knit family.

As a grown-up all she wanted was to quit the rat race and be an island crofter.

But after a decade she left her dream behind in favour of a more stable income and a

secondary school for her kids. She says I have a notion that children's writers explore

unresolved questions in their own childhoods.

I certainly know I do.

One of the other things, you say, Mary Hedderwick, is that little Katie Morag keeps a watchful eye on the grown-ups.

What is she watching for I wonder? Well I just remember as an

only child that was really part of one's day was actually being able to spend a

lot of time working out what adults were up to being a bit naughty

and eavesdropping visually. I wouldn't say I did it deliberately with listening behind doors or anything

like that, but it was a world that was very

...