Rosemary Sutcliff created evocative historical novels and fairy-tales from her powerful imagination. She would have agreed with scientist Albert Einstein:

If you want your children to be intelligent read them fairy-tales. If you want them to be more intelligent read them more fairy tales.

He did not, I suspect, know Rosemary Sutcliff’s novels, re-tellings and fairy-tales (The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup, The Roundabout Horse, Chess Dream in the Garden), nor about her creative imagination and unusual historical intelligence.

Nor have I any idea if Rosemary Sutcliff  knew of Einstein’s view, but I am sure she would have agreed with him because of her upbringing. She herself grew up unable to read until she was ten. She had been after seriously affected by juvenile arthritis when she was very young. Not at school until she was fourteen, she was read to by her mother, including Grimm’s Fairy-Tales, a copy of which is in her library where I write. Surely this fed her intelligence and her imagination.

Einstein also said:

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.