ONCE upon a time, there lived a young mum in windy Edinburgh who couldn't get to the library because of a blizzard. Being a lover of books, she'd read everything in the house from cover to cover and, so missed her reading, that one day she thought: "If I can't find a book to read, I'll start writing one of my own."

That's the story of how mother-of-two Anne Fine became author Anne Fine. Twenty-seven years on, she's published 40 children's books, many of which have been translated into up to 25 languages, as well as five books for adults.

One thing she's always asked is why, in that cold winter confinement, she chose to express herself through literature for children and not for adults.

There could be innumerable reasons, but she'd prefer to think that's just how it happened. She's always enjoyed writing fiction for children as a way of making them understand the world. Her novel-turned-Hollywood-blockbuster, Madame Doubtfire, is a case in point, using comedy to reveal the trials and tribulations of divorcing parents and children caught in the middle of that separation.

On the subject of Madame Doubtfire, she says she saw the film, Mrs Doubtfire, starring Robin Williams, and didn't particularly expect to relate it to her own creation.

"As far as I'm concerned, it came from someone else's imagination and I was fairly distant from it. I enjoyed it for what it was but my book was very different," says Anne, 53. She does, however, admit there is a certain thrill - and financial reward - to be won from having a book turned into a major Hollywood hit.

The author, who has lived in Barnard Castle with her partner for the past ten years, says she asked only one thing of the director and that was not to make the children "bratty" so children watching the film would still relate to the screen characters. She was relieved to find her one recommendation had been followed.

"I was afraid the children would be bratty characters like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone, but they weren't, thankfully, which made them so much more sympathetic to children watching."

After being named only the second-ever Children's Laureate, Anne is all the more fired-up about bringing books to children. She is not radically opposed to television and certainly doesn't regard the books versus TV debate as an either/or choice. But she does think too many parents running around exhausted these days put their children in front of the telly for a quiet life and she is grateful to authors like JK Rowling, who has inspired large swathes of children to venture back in the bookshop or library.

"TV is a brilliant childminder for parents nowadays who have a lot of pressure in their lives," says Anne. "It's sad to think some British children watch for four hours every night, far more than their European counterparts."

She cites a number of different British and American studies which prove children are better off - emotionally, intellectually and imaginatively - if they read, rather than sit in front of the box. Children who watch telly rather than read are found to have a stunted curiosity, while those who read still ask searching questions.

So, in her two-year tenureship as Children's Laureate, Anne Fine is determined to make it her job to get parents to switch off the set and get their children into libraries. "It always amazes me that parents with prams and trailing children spend hours searching for the right pair of trainers for their kids but don't always make the time to take them to the library," she says.

As a mother of two children, Anne didn't have a TV in her house until her eldest daughter was 12. There was simply no need as the two girls had so many other interests. And it's paid off; they are both voracious readers and have gained doctorates. Although Anne's own parents weren't particularly bookish themselves, she grew up with second-hand books around her and was a lover of literature from the start.

"I think you're either born that way or not. I loved reading everything I could get my hands on and I have done ever since. My father used to buy huge bookcases from auctions and, in those days, you'd get them complete with books."

While she was raising her daughters, Anne couldn't always afford to buy them new books, but she made sure they always had more than enough reading matter. "Even if you are broke, you can still furnish a children's library with second-hand books. I used to buy second-hand books all the time for my children."

Anne didn't feel a calling to the world of letters straight away. As a youngster in a family of four other siblings in Northampton, she was probably the most fervent reader, but she never thought of writing herself. She muddled through reading politics and history at Warwick University but, while she got a perfectly respectable degree at the end of it, never felt her heart was in it. "Most of it went in one ear and out the other," she says.

It was only after a stint working as a secretary and in Oxfam's information office, that Anne found herself as a young mum, sitting in front of a rusty typewriter that winter's morning in Edinburgh. Ideas have come to her thick and fast since, but with recent social responsibility as Children's Laureate, she can't tie herself down to the nine-to-five day of writing.

There's so much else to do these days. Reading novels, keeping up to date with what's happening in the world of children's books, being a judge of top reads for kids for the Guardian newspaper... the work is endless, but then, so is the joy she gets from it all.

* Very Different (£4.99) and The Stone Menagerie (£4.99) by Anne Fine are both being published this month by Egmont Books. For more information on Anne Fine, contact her website: www.annefine.co.uk or the Children's Laureate website: www.childrenslaureate.org