My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). But the text, what little there is, is also important. It’s simple and rhythmic, and it rhymes too, so over time children can start to guess what words come next. I’ve also found it brilliant for vocabulary building. In no time, my 18 month-old grandson was able to recognize and name different animals, as well as various items of clothing and accessories. urn:lcp:hippohashat0000dona:epub:1b1892af-98d8-4dae-a5fc-63dbbb2ae4a2 Foldoutcount 0 Identifier hippohashat0000dona Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t1qg8cq2c Invoice 1652 Isbn 1447287894

I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. 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. 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. Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! 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. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers.Ocr tesseract 4.1.1 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.6 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA19858 Openlibrary_edition

This is such a clever book for very young children. It’s bold and colorful, with lots of opportunities for learning, but at the same time with a simple story — animal friends on a shopping trip to buy new clothes — that’s easy for little ones to follow. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

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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.