A Gruff act to follow for Donaldson

Since becoming the UK Children’s Laureate, author Julia Donaldson is enjoying talking about things other than how she wrote children’s classic ‘The Gruffalo’

WHILE PREPARING to interview Julia Donaldson, there comes a point when a journalist must decide a) when to mention the “G” word, or b) whether they should bring it up at all.

“G”, in Donaldson’s case, stands for Gruffalo, her most famous creation and one of the best-selling children’s picture books of all time. It made her a household name, and a lot of money, but Donaldson has written a staggering number of books (more than 150).

While in Dublin for an event with her Irish counterpart Siobhán Parkinson (Donaldson was made UK Children’s Laureate last year), she contrasts the breadth of the role with what she’s best known for.

"Being laureate, I find that I'm developing and learning a lot, especially about libraries. I also get to talk about a lot of things other than how I wrote The Gruffalo."

This sounds like a note of warning, so we steer towards library closures in Britain, which concerns Donaldson, not just as an author, but also as a literacy advocate. Separate to her work as a children’s writer, she has written a huge range of phonic books that teach children to read.

“I had seen so many rubbish reading schemes, so when I was asked to contribute to one, I said that I’d prefer to write the entire thing myself.”

As a child, Donaldson taught her younger sister to read and felt literary urges from a young age. "When I was five, I wanted to be a poet. My father gave me a big book called The Book of 1,000 Poems, which I still have, and because I had a good memory, I loved to recite poems."

Donaldson says the love of recital was also about performance, and she found herself “stage struck”, with a lifelong goal of being an actress. A French and drama degree followed at university, and during summer breaks she would make money and exercise her performance muscles by busking. “I also wrote songs, and loved to sing them, so in a way busking lead to song-writing, which led me back to books.”

Although she is best known for picture books like The Snail and the Whale, Cave Babyand Tabby McTat, Donaldson has written books for older children and teens.

Her picture books place an emphasis on story but also on a strong sense of rhyme, which is connected to her youth.

"When I was 12, I was an understudy in a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Night after night, I sat in the wings with Shakespeare seeping into me. It taught me about the rhythm of language."

Because of the demographic of her readers and the possibilities that presents, Donaldson says her experience as a writer is far from the solitary, isolated stereotype.

“I’m on the road a lot, performing shows or at book festivals, so I generally have a huge bag of props with me for entertaining the children.”

The day after we meet she attends an event in Derry city, bringing her book T he Highway Ratto life by dressing up as a squirrel. Given her palpable sense of mischief and theatricality, it's clear Donaldson loves this. Her husband Malcolm regularly performs with her and before they had children they busked and played as a singing duo.

As the author of so many books, Donaldson has a stringent work ethic but tries to write only when she feels like it. Inspiration, she says, can be unexpected and she tries to harness it when it arrives. Many of her ideas come while doing mundane tasks, but she cautions that daydreaming is no substitute for the desk-grind of a writer’s life.

“It’s so important to put in that desk time, even if it’s with a blank page in front of you. That process is still about ripening up your mind, getting ready to write and to capture ideas. A writer doesn’t get those ‘bus stop’ moments of inspiration if they are not consistently trying to create something.”

Donaldson has never felt the urge to write adult books and says there is a snobbishness towards authors who write for children.

“There’s a Posy Simmonds cartoon where someone asks a children’s writer: ‘When are you going to write a proper book?’ Authors who write for adults have a cushy time. At a book festival if you perform for children, they’re not going to just sit there if you’re boring. They’ll start to fidget or go to the loo. Children are tough critics.”

She has two adult sons (a third, Hamish, died in 2003 aged 25), and she often uses her husband and grandchildren as “sounding boards” for work. The best part of her work at the moment is the platform of laureate, and what she can achieve with it, she says.

“For a long time, I’ve wanted to write a series of tiny plays aimed at teaching children to read. In the past, whenever I mentioned it, it would be dismissed, but I mentioned it in a speech as laureate and several publishers expressed an interest, so the role itself, can make a difference.”