Does she see books as a way for children to learn about the world around them, or an oasis in which they can escape from it? We have sailed past our allotted time by now but I have one last question from my three-year-old: why, at the end of A Squash and a Squeeze, does the pig look angry but the other animals don’t? urn:lcp:troll0000dona:epub:bb9b986e-99b4-450d-a092-6f66e28cd09b Foldoutcount 0 Identifier troll0000dona Identifier-ark ark:/13960/s2zwmxkcd5n Invoice 1652 Isbn 9780230017931

Julia Donaldson is the outrageously talented, prize-winning author of the world's best-loved picture books. She was the UK Children's Laureate 2011-13 and has been honoured with a CBE for Services to Literature. Her books include The Flying Bath, Room on the Broom and the modern classic The Gruffalo, which has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over sixty languages. Julia also writes fiction as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live children's shows are always in demand. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh. The Smeds and the Smoos wasn’t about Brexit, it was just Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending,” Donaldson insists. “I never start a book thinking, ‘I want to teach the world to stop being at war.’” Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. When I first arrive at the Donaldsons’ house, Malcolm gives me a tour, which largely consists of him naming everyone in the family photos on the walls. “This is Jerry and Alastair, our two sons,” he says, pointing at pictures of two men. “Our oldest son Hamish died, which is terribly sad,” he says, voice catching a little.

Summary

I ask Scheffler if his and his German-French family’s lives have changed much in Britain since Brexit. “Not so much on a day-to-day basis, but I look at the quality of politicians in this country and it’s incredible. In Germany, it would be unthinkable to have such incompetent, cynical and corrupt people in government. Sorry, I’m getting political,” he says.

In The Baddies, the witch, the troll and the ghost come a cropper when a little girl refuses to be scared by them. Although it’s never mentioned in the story, she is of south Asian heritage. Is this the first time they’ve featured a non-caucasian main character? Ocr tesseract 5.1.0-1-ge935 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 0.9548 Ocr_module_version 0.0.16 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-NS-2000640 Openlibrary_edition It goes deeper than that. The stories should be universal, so if there is a message, it should be for anyone at any time,” she says.

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Scheffler found his way into art by being political. “When I was growing up in Hamburg, there was the Vietnam war going on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there are teenage drawings of mine in which I reflected on that, so that was my formation,” he says. “Oh! I didn’t know that,” says Donaldson, turning to him in surprise. “Now I draw rabbits and mice,” he says and they look at each other and laugh.Well, we don’t usually have people in our books at all,” says Donaldson, meaning that their collaborations are usually animal- (and Gruffalo) based.

Could you create your own set of clues to help some friends find some treasure hidden around your classroom / school? After studying drama and French at university, she busked around Europe, joined by a fellow performing enthusiast, who was, of course, Malcolm. I ask if their busking days inspired Donaldson and Scheffler’s book, Tabby McTat, about a busking cat and his shabby human, Fred. “Julia’s sister says Fred is who I’d be if I hadn’t met Julia, which I deeply resent,” Malcolm chortles. He is certainly as devoted as Fred: when Donaldson can’t remember quite when she finished writing The Baddies, Malcolm consults his diary and gives her precise start and finishing dates.No, no!” cries Donaldson, while Scheffler says simultaneously “Oh that’s a good idea!” He then ponders how he might have pulled that off, Donaldson’s objections notwithstanding: “I should have drawn one of the baddies with that [Boris Johnson] hair.” One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. When Julia’s writing, I’m like a father who is at the birth of a child. I can’t have the baby, so I’m on hand to make the tea,” Malcolm says. I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.