Children are not, says Julia Donaldson with a smile, going to write to her directly about the pandemic. Her assistant has just delivered a fresh pile of post, and the author shuffles through a stack of opened letters to make the point: “Children aren’t going to write, ‘Oh dear I feel so lonely or overcrowded’ – they are just writing their usual, ‘There were four kittens called mitten, litten, nitten and kitten.’ They are so sweet, some of the things they write.”
If, as well as her permanent affection for the nation’s children, there is mild exasperation at being asked to act as their spokesperson as they emerge from another lockdown, it can be forgiven: as the creator of such beloved characters as the Gruffalo, Tiddler and Zog, the former children’s laureate, actor and singer-songwriter has long been expected to help her readers think, rhyme and imagine for themselves.
That responsibility goes with the territory: a Donaldson book sells about every 11 seconds in the UK, and between 2010 and 2019 she sold more than 27m books in the UK (9m more than any other writer). And after a year of ongoing coronavirus restrictions on children’s socialising and schooling, the grandmother of nine, who is 72, is particularly concerned about the impact on young lives.
“One of my granddaughters loves singing,” she says. “She came back from nursery and her parents said, ‘Oh, what have you been singing today?’ And she said, ‘Singing spreads germs.’ I feel it is criminal to stop people singing, particularly children, and I worry that there would be some children who grow not able to sing. We all know that singing is what keeps us in good health”.
In the sitting room of the home she shares with her husband Malcolm, a retired consultant paediatrician, high windows flood the space with spring sunshine. Donaldson is examining page proofs for a new collection of traditional rhymes for younger children, and imagining the venues where these might be spoken or sung. While the Scottish government made allowances for new parents’ groups last year, all such sanity-saving gatherings ceased again across the UK under the winter lockdown.
I confess that my attendance at the local library’s Bounce and Rhyme sessions was as much for my own benefit as that of my newborn. “So important!” Donaldson exclaims. “Socialising with other mothers. Also, I’ve heard that, for some who maybe haven’t had a close relationship with their own parents, it’s educational to see the physical contact and the bonding. I remember Anne Fine [also a former children’s laureate] saying it was absolutely life-saving to go to those sessions.”
While the reopening of libraries will be welcomed across the generations, their closure was a pressing matter well before Covid: in Donaldson’s role as children’s laureate from 2011 to 2013, she campaigned passionately against library cuts, writing articles, meeting ministers and (with Malcolm) embarking on a six-week tour of UK libraries. Her newest book in the Acorn Wood series, Cat’s Cookbook, is set in a library; Cat is looking for a recipe book, but is sidetracked by the many literary tangents on offer until she finds what she is looking for under the direction of Frog, the helpful librarian.
With delightfully detailed illustrations by her regular collaborator Axel Scheffler, and multiple book flaps for small fingers to lift, it is a strikingly intricate product. “I love Axel’s interiors,” Donaldson says warmly. “He prefers doing nature and fairyland, but I think he should be a furniture designer.” The stories themselves are a particular challenge to write, she explains, “because you have to dream up a little mini-story, which has to be six spreads, and the flap can only be on one side; I remember going around completely in this world of flaps. If I went to the loo, I’d imagine that would be a flap…”
During lockdowns, Donaldson has shared weekly videos online. Julia Donaldson And Friends was filmed from her sofa, with musical accompaniment provided by Malcolm on guitar, and virtual visits from favourite illustrators such as Scheffler, Lydia Monks and Nick Sharratt showing children how to draw some of their favourite characters.
“Suddenly everything in the diary – all the performances we were going to do, were wiped out,” she says. “Axel and I had done these coronavirus rhymes, so I was thinking, what else can I do?” At the start of the first lockdown, they created a series of images showing how the Highway Rat, Stick Man and others were coping with social distancing, home schooling and isolation. (The Gruffalo is shown walking 2 metres behind the mouse; in an update of A Squash And A Squeeze, the animals bring “the little old lady” groceries while she self-isolates inside her house.)
Having lived with a hearing impairment (as one in six of us do, she points out) since her 30s, the unintended consequences of wearing masks also concern her. “Even if you don’t realise you rely on lip-reading, you probably do. And wearing a mask makes you more likely to shop online or to go into big supermarkets and be totally anonymous. Where I live, there’s a lovely, bustling high street with independent shops, and for lots of older people that’s how they stay sane: they pop into shops, they know the shopkeepers and have a little chat. Then suddenly all the shopkeepers have got to wear masks, and they are probably just not going. I’m not. I stay at home because it makes me feel depressed.”
The charity Life & Deaf recently sent her a clear fabric mask that allows for lip-reading: “But it’s those who are talking to deaf people whose lips need to be seen!” She is not arguing that face coverings are unnecessary, she notes. “But if masks are to stay for a while, it should be compulsory that they are see-through.”
Donaldson’s work is so easy and satisfying to read aloud that one can underestimate the skill that goes into such deceptive simplicity. It is Malcolm who reads the earliest draft, she says, “If he stumbles over anything, then I go back to it. It has to scan. It’s no good the mum or dad having to read it wrong the first time, and then go, ‘Oh, that’s where to put the strength,’ ” she says. “You want the person instinctively to put the stress in the right place.”
She warms to her theme. “The Gruffalo, let’s say, starts with, ‘A mouse took a stroll to the deep dark wood, a fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good…’” Her voice skips lightly across the syllables, and one gets a flash of the captivating live performer she is. “It takes a long time to condense and there’s a lot of work involved. You don’t just say, ‘Once upon a time there was a mouse.’ Does he go for a walk, a stroll, in the wood? What’s going to be the last word in that line?”
This familiarity with the architecture of poetry and song began in her early years, when her grandmother introduced her to Edward Lear’s nonsense rhymes. Later, she formed a keen understanding of the importance of an audience – busking around Europe with Malcolm after they fell in love at Bristol University, performing comedy songs on the Brighton folk scene in the 70s, then taking her children’s musicals with a small cast to London and going on to write for the presenters of the BBC2 children’s programme Play Away. It was only in 1991, as her three sons grew older and the family moved to Glasgow, that Donaldson was contacted by a publishing house to ask if the words of her song A Squash And A Squeeze, composed in 1975, could be made into a picture book for children.
Donaldson has also just published a Gruffalo And Friends outdoor activity book, a gloriously grubby guide to mud spells, cobweb hunts and nutty hide and seek. It is written in collaboration with Little Wild Things, a community organisation run by her daughter-in-law, Christine, which provides outdoor play sessions in West Oxfordshire. “It’s so nice when they can pick up a worm or handle dung beetles,” Donaldson says approvingly.
Her pre-Covid schools visits often left her concerned that children can’t tell the difference between a bluebell and a dandelion. “Those are my earliest childhood memories, learning about acorns and acorn cups, and shepherd’s purse and buttercups. There’s so much talk about the environment and loving the planet. How can you love the planet if you’re not familiar with it?”
There has been some discussion of whether the pandemic may have improved children’s relationship with the outdoors, with so much socialising pushed into the open air over the past year. “Even if you don’t have a garden, most places have got some nature. We walked to quite a rundown area the other day but there still was a little stream and pussy willows, and birds.”
But indoors, the unequal social impact of lockdown troubles her greatly. “We’ve already got a very wide gap between different schools, but also within schools, between [children] with very well-educated parents who have probably been taking home learning very seriously, and other families who haven’t even got enough to eat, let alone do their reading, writing and arithmetic.” Their letters might not ask her to directly, but here she is, asking that children be heard – with the same clarity she longs for on her local high street.
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