Terry Jones was shortlisted for the Roald Dahl funny prize for his cautionary tales about animals, Animal Tales. The book, illustrated by Michael Foreman, includes whimsical tales of a dog who cannot understand why he is not allowed to practice medicine, a fox who runs a circus of trained chickens, a flea who thinks he is the manager of a chain of mega-stores and a skunk who falls madly in love with a bear.
Jones's first book for children, published in 1981, was Fairy Tales. He said, "I'd always loved the idea of fairy tales and I thought it would be nice to write totally new ones – ones that haven't been told before but sound as if they're old fairy tales… I just took (my daughter) Sally as my audience and quite shamelessly put into the stories everything I knew she liked – witches and monsters and stuff."
He went on to publish further children's stories, including The Saga of Erik the Viking, Nicobobinus and Fantastic Stories.
Terry Jones came into the Guardian studio to record a Guardian Books podcast interview about his recent book for adults. But we also had some time with him to ask him YOUR questions about his children's books, his life and his writing.
