Feature
Julia dreams
Perhaps Britain’s most prolific and treasured children’s writer today, Julia Donaldson shares her tips for a good story and says she still uses methods she learnt at primary school.
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f your child hasn’t already been delighted by ‘The Snail on the Whale’, transported by ‘The Stick Man’, or terrified by ‘The Gruffalo’, a whole world of delicious rhymes and images await them as they dive into the works of Julia Donaldson, perhaps the most prolific and memorable children’s author this century. She spent her early career in publishing and community theatre, when her rhyme ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’ was turned into a children’s book in 1993. Since then, she’s penned no fewer than
184 children’s books, including the household names we know and love, and was appointed Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013. “I grew up in a house with my parents, aunt, uncle and grandparents,” Julia tells Primary Times. “My grandmother always used to save me big brown envelopes to write on. My first story was about a wizard who lost his tail. I remember at school writing a story about an orange rabbit running away from a farmer, perhaps there’s a bit of Beatrix Potter in there? All my books, re-
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ally, are similar in nature to those I wrote at primary school.” Last year she wrote her fourth book in the Ladybird series, ‘What the Ladybird Heard at the Seaside’. “In every book [in this series] there’s this comic duo, Lanky Len and Hefty Hugh, bungling robbers who always have a plan to steal something,” she explains. “Here, they are trying to cut off a mermaid’s hair and sell it to a famous star. The ladybird gets the seaside animals to thwart the plan. The book is illustrated beautifully by Lydia Monk who has illustrated a number of my books now. The idea of the first Ladybird book came after Lydia and I worked on ‘Sharing a Shell’ and she suggested that we work on a book about farmyard animals. While on a walk with my son, we came up with Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len.” As the 2011-2013 Children’s Laureate, Julia has spent a lot of time promoting reading and writing in schools and libraries across the UK, She says that, to get into the flow of writing, children could start writing scripts, perhaps for homemade plays or videos, as they are plot focused and a fast form of creative writing. “I think children love to write short plays. I know I did when I was younger, as it’s actually easier to write a play than a book. You don’t have to write all the descriptive parts with a play like you do with a book.” If the creative juices just aren’t flowing, Julia advises, “Children could take an already well-known story and characters, say ‘The Three Little Pigs’, and create a play about them doing something. “When I was a working with children, I would ask them to create a character and give the character a problem. Then make the problem get worse before it gets better: don’t solve the problem too soon. And then come up with ways the problem gets solved. Following this flow can help channel the creativity. It’s very hard to create a plot but a child’s imagination can run wild and I would say let the child write
about whatever they want to write about without laying down the law to them.” Children’s literature can be quite scary at times and Julia is the master of finding that balance of light and dark in her writing, creating exciting twists and turns. “There needs to be a dark or threatening aspect,” she says. “I think all stories are like this, not just children stories. That’s what makes them interesting. But with all my children’s stories the bad element gets conquered. “If you can take the character out of their comfort zone, explain when they’re threatened, and pit their wits against an opponent and often things get worse before they get better - that’s the nature of all good stories.”
The Woolly Bear Caterpillar by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Yuval Zommer, is available from Macmillan Children’s Books, £12.99
