Philip Pullman and three of my predecessors as Children’s Laureate, Anne Fine, Michael Morpurgo and Quentin Blake, say that as an act of protest they will stop visiting schools. These distinguished children’s authors and illustrators are infuriated with a government scheme that requires them to be vetted in case they are a danger to children.

I have a certain sympathy with them — but I will not feel compelled to join them in their boycott.

Although it will be irritating to have to pay £64 for the privilege of being on the Independent Safeguarding Authority database, I do not see why writers should be treated differently from others who work with children — from music teachers to dinner ladies.

School visits show children that writers and illustrators are no different from anyone else — we are just like them and they can become writers when they are older. There isn’t a hierarchy with writers and illustrators at the top and children at the bottom. So for writers to say that we’re not the same as other people — that we are special, and certain rules do not apply to us — goes against everything I strongly believe.

I don’t believe that registering will make a difference to how children feel about us — nor will it create or reinforce, as some claim, a gulf between children and adult society. There is an argument to be had about whether children are overprotected but if all those who work in a position of trust with children have to be checked, I won’t feel “insulted or degraded” by being included.

It’s far more important that we continue to visit schools, both lesser-known writers and successful ones. Children are enthralled to meet real writers and illustrators, and it’s critical to encourage that connection between authors, their books and children. For children to meet a writer and to discover their personality can help enormously their enjoyment of all books. It’s a two-way relationship: children learn from writers and writers learn from children, who ask questions, suggest stories and simply describe their lives.

When I talk to children I try to emphasise that when I was a boy I wrote and drew no better than they do. Children are amazingly creative, but as we grow older most of us become self-conscious and inhibited. I encourage them to continue, and say that the main difference between me and most other adults is that I didn’t stop creating. I’m just doing what I loved to do as a child — drawing and making up stories.

It’s that creative impulse that will suffer if we let our irritation with a bureaucratic intrusion stop us from going into classrooms.

Anthony Browne is Children’s Laureate

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