A Monster Tale with Julia Donaldson

by Richard Goslan

Since it was first published in 1999, the Gruffalo has sold around 3.5 million copies, been translated into 31 languages (it’s An Gruffalo in Gaelic) and has been performed as a play throughout the UK and even on Broadway in New York. Talk to just about any parent who has had a child in the past eight years, and they will tell you what a pleasure it’s been to read the book to their children. But the author, Julia Donaldson, lives in Bearsden on the north side of Glasgow, and she sounds as surprised as anyone about her unpredicted stardom.
“It’s brilliant – but I do have to pinch myself sometimes and think, is this really happening?” she says.
“Writing children’s books is not the sort of job like being a bank clerk where you move up the ladder. It’s been a very unpredictable career, and that’s also what’s been exciting about it. But there’s no rhyme or reason to it, because it’s just about what people want to read and buy.”
She might sound surprised, but in a part of the market where just about anyone seems to think they can dash off a book for kids (did anyone actually read Budgie the Little Helicopter, by the Duchess of York?) Julia Donaldson has found a magic formula which simply works. Her genius is in writing stories which parents can read again and again and again – without tiring of the language or losing interest in its illustrations. Julia’s books have a rhythm which makes reading them aloud a pleasure, but they also have a cleverness which allows them to work on different levels. Much of what she ends up publishing is as a result of feedback she’s had from her own family, she says.
“They are my testing ground, because when I’m writing something I’ll try out lines on them, or a choice of lines which rhyme, so I’ll ask them which one trips off the tongue better,” says Julia.
“Or when I’ve written something I’ll give it to (my husband) Malcolm and he’ll read it aloud to me without me telling him where the stress lies, and if he stumbles over it or he puts the stress in the wrong place then I realise it’s not going to be read the way it is in my head, and I change it a little bit.
“I was also very aware from reading to my own children about what worked as a picture book, and I enjoyed books – such as Each Peachy Pear Plum, by Janet and Allan Ahlberg – which came full circle, and had a shape and structure and cleverness, not just a short story. The ones that had something a little bit clever appealed to me.”
Julia’s status as the JK Rowling for a younger generation has seen her embark on a worldwide tour over the past year, along with husband Malcolm, who took a sabbatical from his position as a doctor at Yorkhill Children’s Hospital to join her in performing from her books. They even put on a show at a festival in Bermuda, where local resident and Gruffalo fan Catherine Zeta-Jones turned up with her two children.
“Catherine’s son Dylan helped act out one of the roles in the Magic Paintbrush, and I have to say he was excellent,” says Julia.
But it must have been another moment when this unassuming mother had to give herself an extra strong pinch just to make sure this wasn’t another figment of her brilliant imagination. It’s certainly a long way from where she started out, making up songs which she and Malcolm could busk to fund their trips round Europe – she says the best one was in Italian, about pasta. The busking led Julia into writing songs for children’s television, until one of them, A Squash and a Squeeze, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by Axel Scheffler.
“It was difficult working in television, because you’d be working with a producer and then they’d leave and someone new would come in and you’d have to start all over again trying to get songs commissioned, so after A Squash and a Squeeze I thought I’d concentrate on books.”
It wasn’t plain sailing, however, as Julia faced quite a few rejections until she hit gold with the Gruffalo. “I had about six or seven things rejected until the Gruffalo. And even it sat on someone’s desk for the best part of a year, and they said they liked it but it had to go to some editorial meeting and I got so sick of it.
“So in the end I took the law into my own hands and sent the manuscript directly to Axel Scheffler, who’d already illustrated A Squash and a Squeeze, and unknown to me he showed it to an editor at Macmillan, and I immediately got a letter from them saying they loved it, and there wasn’t much looking back after that.”
Instead of resting on her laurels and watching the royalty cheques pile through the door, Julia has been busier than ever with a range of projects, including a series of phonic reading books called Songbirds.
“I’ve always been interested in how children learn to read, just from an observational point of view, rather than doing a PhD or anything in it,” she says.
“When my little sister was about four and I was about six and we were away on holiday, I remember teaching her to read, teaching her how to blend sounds in a very phonic way, which was how we were taught to read, and then that went right out of fashion, but now it’s back in. Songbirds are very much about teaching reading through basic methods with sounds, rather than in a look-and-say way.”
But Julia’s goal in everything she does is to keep it light and fun for children.  
“I think it’s better for parents to keep reading as something that’s fun to do together, rather than getting into all sorts of hang ups if you get into teaching your children things and try to push them – I think it’s better to leave that to the teachers.”
Her latest book is Tiddler, about a little fish with a very big imagination. Once again, it sees Julia teaming up with illustrator Axel Scheffler, who Julia’s quick to praise for his part in her books’ success.
“Axel is brilliant at interpreting – he picks up on any humour that is already in there and he will add these wonderful touches – like in Tiddler, a lot of it is set in an underwater school, and he has just done it brilliantly so that at the very end there are a couple of fish flicking each other, just as normal children would do at the end of the day.”
And Tiddler has already received its world premiere on stage – in the unlikely setting of Hillhead Primary School in Wick, in the far north of Scotland.
“I happened to be up in Wick, and realised the harbour was just like the one from A Snail and a Whale,” says Julia. She dedicated the book to Hillhead Primary School, and returned recently to see the kids there put on the first ever performance of Tiddler, complete with fish on sticks.
The story sums up Julia Donaldson’s down-to-earth personality, when she could be waiting for Broadway producers to call about the latest production. But being based in Scotland seems to have helped keep her grounded, with only the purchase of a flat in Edinburgh to show for her newfound wealth.

But what is it about Scotland that we can lay claim to two of the world’s most successful children’s writers? Okay, neither JK Rowing or Julia Donaldson is actually Scottish, but let’s not let minor details like that get in the way of a success story. Both writers have been based here for a long time and have found their stars in the ascendant while living and working in Scotland. Julia ended up living here because of her husband’s job, but has found it an inspiring place to write.
“It’s like a big village for writers, there’s a camaraderie and you can get to know other writers very easily,” she says. “The Scottish Book Trust has also been helpful by providing a budget for things like author visits to schools, so I’ve been able to make visits to thousands of schools and libraries. And although the weather sometimes gets to me, I do love the outdoors, walking and cycling.”
And maybe we should thank our less-than-kind climate for the fact Julia Donaldson has spent as much time as she has couped up indoors, dreaming up characters which our kids – and we as parents – have grown so attached to.