"There is always one moment in childhood", wrote that modern master of the soulful soundbite, Kahlil Gibran, "when the door opens and lets the future in." For me, that moment occurred around age four, when at dinner one night I discovered that our kitchen table had a drawer underneath it, and proceeded to use it to hide my crusts, just as the eponymous heroine had in my bedtime book, My Naughty Little Sister And Bad Harry by Dorothy Edwards and Shirley Hughes. I was promptly spotted, roundly rebuked, and refused pudding, which set the pattern for my lifetime: ineptly modelling my own behaviour on attractively intractable literary characters (My Naughty Little Sister remains a favourite muse), reaping dissatisfaction, disillusion and despair, but persisting nonetheless, despite the repeated lack of real, and metaphorical, cornflake tart.

But what is interesting is that this formative experience was inspired by a book that I couldn't even read. A couple of years ago, National Children's Book Week prompted plenty of nostalgic Guardian Unlimited discussion about influential childhood literature, but of course these were the ones we consumed as voracious little bookworms, already in thrall to the freedom and power we found in their internal, imaginative worlds. I'm well aware that my current reading tastes are still moulded by my early love for Rosemary Sutcliff, Alan Garner, Robert Jarvis and Willard Price (although it can be difficult to find adult books with a generous helping of ancient druids, Bengal tigers and warrior mice), but I rarely wonder about the impact of the very first books that hit my brain.

Until now, thanks to Picture Book, BBC4's delightful three-part journey through the evolution and engineering of "the books we first learn to read" with the likes of Alan Ahlberg, Shirley Hughes and Lauren Child. The first episode was particularly exhilarating, reminding us just how brilliantly pre-literate children interpret pictures and text; how quickly we become sophisticated decoders of irony and visceral critics of poetic rhythms and sounds. The interplay of the sound of words and their shape on the page, alongside the visual subtext of pictures, all wrapped up in an intimate act of familial and social bonding, makes such a profound impression on our stripling synapses that Proust will probably never match the pleasure and complexity of "reading" Each Peach Pear Plum.

I have a notoriously bad memory, but when I open certain picture books, they still evoke that exact mixture of discovery, delight and, yes, secrecy: the sense that, although she's the one reading the words, you already know far more about this story than your mum. You've owned it. You've recognised its truth and its subtleties. You've taken it into the core of your being. And you're probably about to start acting it out.

I can't remember exactly when or where they first entered my head, but I just know that my top three influential pre-reading books were My Naughty Little Sister, Helen Oxenbury's The Dancing Class, and Michael Rosen's poem Chocolate Cake, with illustrations by Quentin Blake. Can you recall your favourite book before you could read? And is anyone else out there still suffering the consequences today?



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