Similar charges, meanwhile, have been levelled at Donaldson, whose dominance of the picture book genre is seen by some as crowding out the market for new titles. “Some authors are a bit sniffy about her, but I think that’s just pure and simple jealousy because she’s so successful and she gets all that shelf space,” the author and illustrator Rob Biddulph told me. “But there’s a reason for it: she’s a genius.” A typical public event consists of acting out (more or less word-for-word) four stories, and singing three or four songs (mostly from Donaldson's three albums of songs – The Gruffalo Song and Other Songs, Room on the Broom and Other Songs and The Gruffalo's Child and Other Songs). There is always a strong element of audience participation, with children (and sometimes their parents) invited on stage to act parts in the stories. Malcolm Donaldson almost always takes part in the events, and they are also often joined by other performers including family members.

a b Franklin-Wallis, Oliver (17 December 2020). "How Julia Donaldson conquered the world". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2020.

In 1995, while looking for ideas for an educational series of plays based on traditional tales, Donaldson came across a version of a Chinese story about a little girl who escapes being eaten by a tiger by claiming to be the fearsome Queen of the Jungle and inviting him to walk behind her. The tiger misinterprets the terror of the various animals they meet as being related to her rather than him, and flees. Donaldson sensed that this story could be developed into more than an educational item and returned to it later as a possible basis for a picture book. She decided to make the girl a mouse, and chose a fox, owl and snake as woodland rather than jungle creatures but wasn't satisfied with lines like "They ought to know, they really should / There aren't any tigers in this wood". Despite not knowing the moral of the story, this is a fascinating book and as I read it, I found myself wondering what would happen next.

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. It was a rule we held to be self-evident that you couldn’t afford to do rhyming books,” Wilson, who then worked in Methuen’s rights department, told me, somewhat sheepishly. (The book has since sold more than 1.5m copies, and Donaldson’s work has been translated into more than 50 languages.) Today, a significant proportion of picture books are written in verse, somewhat to Donaldson’s bemusement. “I think there’s far too many rhyming books. And a lot of them – I don’t want to sound vain or anything – a lot of them make me cringe.” Donaldson’s impact on children’s literacy, through her books and her Songbirds reading scheme, is hard to quantify, though everyone I spoke to agreed her contribution is profound. “Julia’s changed modern picture books,” Ray, her editor, told me. An hour-long feast of storytelling that thrills children and parents alike. A MASTERPIECE.’ Broadway BabyIdentify all of the rhyming words that are used in the story. Can you think of other words that rhyme with these? Under the sea, out on the farm and into the jungle, these terrific tales weave together a whole host of colourful characters from Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s best-loved titles:

Donaldson studied Drama and French at Bristol University (1967–1970), graduating with a 2:1 honours degree. During her time there she acted in departmental productions and learnt the guitar. In 1968, she and her friend Maureen Purkis took part in the play I am not the Eiffel Tower with music composed by Colin Sell, an accomplished young pianist who was studying Spanish and Portuguese at Bristol and who has gone on to appear in BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Sell's roommate Malcolm Donaldson, a medical student who played left-handed guitar and was a keen amateur actor, came to see the show and subsequently teamed up with Sell, Donaldson and Purkis to sing in the pubs during Bristol University Rag Week in early 1969. Almost immediately after this Donaldson and Purkis were seconded to live in Paris for six months as part of their degree course where they sang and played their guitars to café audiences for money. Malcolm joined them in the summer and the trio performed various songs by the Beatles and from musicals including Hair. At her best, as with the susurrous, wave-like meter of The Snail and the Whale, she is irresistible: “And she gazed at the sky, the sea, the land / The waves and the caves and the golden sand / She gazed and gazed, amazed by it all / And she said to the whale, ‘I feel so small.’” In the picture book trade, Donaldson is revered for her lyrical, rhyming verse and her ceaseless productivity. In 2020 alone, her publishers Scholastic and Macmillan have published What the Ladybird Heard at the Seaside (illustrated by Lydia Monks), The Teeny Weeny Genie (illustrated by Anna Currey), The Hospital Dog (Sara Ogilvie) and Counting Creatures (Sharon King-Chai). That’s before you count reissues and the countless activity books, cookery books and other spin-offs not written by Donaldson but based on her creations. From the 1990s when Donaldson was extensively visiting school and libraries, she extended techniques learned in Bristol and Brighton to encourage children to act and sing with her. Following the publication of The Gruffalo she was invited to book festivals, participating in the Edinburgh International Book Festival every year from 1999 onwards, and appearing regularly at Hay, Cheltenham and Bath festivals, as well as at many theatres. The Gruffalo was released in 1999, and met with immediate success. The book won the prestigious Smarties prize, which Donaldson accepted wearing a Gruffalo hand puppet. At the time she was working as a writer in residence at a school in Easterhouse, a deprived area of Glasgow. When Donaldson returned from the ceremony, the children gave her a gold star.

Research one of the creatures in the story and write a report about it. What does each creature eat? How does it move? How is it adapted to help it live underwater?