check out George the Giant’s new clothes, see how many animals the little old lady can squash and squeeze into her tiny house and follow Tiddler’s tall tales and big imagination across the ocean. For example, the facial expressions from the different sea creatures to describe emotions and feelings. In school, he entertains his incredulous classmates with stories of diving with dolphins and meeting mermaids. Tiddler, the star of the book, is a little fish with a penchant for telling wild stories, usually involving some feat of heroism on his part.

Tiddler by Julia Donaldson | Goodreads

Some of Donaldson's songs – "The Luck of the Game", "Funny Face" and "A Squash and a Squeeze" – were recorded at this time for BBC albums. Tiddler's tall tales were so legendary that other fish told them at home to their grandmas and they pass it on to others. Donaldson's parents, James (always known as Jerry) and Elizabeth, met shortly before the Second World War, which then separated them for six years. Donaldson composed two musicals for children: King Grunt's Cake (1976) and Pirate on the Pier (1980) which she and a small cast performed both in London and Brighton.Princess Pearl, Sir Gadabout and their trusty 'air ambulance', Zog the dragon fly around tending a sunburnt mermaid, a distressed unicorn and a sneezy lion. She originally wrote songs for children's television but has concentrated on writing books since the words of one of her songs, "A Squash and a Squeeze", were made into a children's book in 1993. These tales involve octopuses, shipwrecks and turtles, and the stories spread like wildfire, from one fish, to another, and another. He moved to England in 1982 to study illustration at the Bath Academy of Art, and then set up home in London. Tiddler’ is the story of a little fish telling tall tales, who goes on a very big adventure (there are obvious echoes and influences here of Disney’s Nemo) – it is a circular story and a very pleasing one.

Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales - Live on Stage Tiddler and Other Terrific Tales - Live on Stage

With brilliant rhythmic verse, bright and distinctive illustrations, this is a firm favourite with children and parents alike. The Julia Donaldson/Axel Scheffler combination has once more turned up with a winner in this colourful story that all happens under the sea! Since publication of The Gruffalo, Donaldson has worked with other illustrators including Lydia Monks, David Roberts and Nick Sharratt, who has also illustrated two books of poems by Donaldson, Crazy Mayonnaisy Mum and Wriggle and Roar. At weekends she and Malcolm took part in the Bristol Street Theatre, a group of mainly postgraduate students inspired by the late playwright David Illingworth. My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old.

When Crab finds a new shell, he doesn’t want to share it with anyone – especially not a blobby purple anemone and a tickly bristleworm. In 1991 Donaldson was contacted by Methuen Publishing to ask if the words of her song "A Squash and a Squeeze", which she had written for the BBC's Playboard programme in 1975, could be made into a picture book for children. Scheffler's drawings bring the tale to vivid life, adding to the words and giving little ones plenty to look at and enjoy.