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. This story feels hyper relevant when you look at everything that's going on in the world at the moment. Republicans vs. Democrats, Conservatives vs. Labour, everywhere you look it's a red vs. blue world and for little ones who have no understanding of politics and no idea why everyone is so angry at each other it must be quite scary. It feels like The Smeds and the Smoos has arrived at exactly the right time, bursting onto the scene to remind children that underneath we are all the same. It doesn't matter what colour you are, and oftentimes the people warning you to stay away from others have no idea what they're really talking about. Op ‘n verre planeet woon daar Smooie en Smoue. Smooie is rooi, slaap in beddens, speel graag in water, drink pienk melk en eet brood. Smoue is blou, slaap in gate wat hulle self gawe, speel graag op hulle heuwel, drink tee en eet groen bredie. Fleur, ‘n mooie jong Smooi, se oupa het haar nog altyd teen Smoue gewaarsku soos wat Fanie, ‘n knap jong Smou, se ouma hom nog altyd teen Smooie gewaarsku het. Maar eendag ontmoet Fleur en Fanie en begin skelm saam speel totdat hulle, jare later, besluit om te trou. Maar o wee, die familie…… Dit dwing Fleur en Fanie om ‘n plan te beraam om hulle families anders te oortuig. 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. This books follows the story of a smed and a smoo who are both warned by their families to avoid the other. One is red and the other is blue. Despite their families views the smed and the smoo run away together and get married. Whilst Janet and Bill have ran away, their families look for them and in the process begin to form positive relationships.

I think the story carries some good messages of tolerance and acceptance whilst appealing to a younger audience. It shows generational differences and views, demonstrating how the views of the younger generation are important and can help to open older generations to changing their views and beliefs. Julia Donaldson’s uses phonetically decodable alien words, such as ‘loobular lake’ and ‘glompoms’. This means that children are able to watch the decoding of alien words, modelled by a reader, or are able to practise decoding them themselves within a fun and memorable story, giving their work at school on alien words meaning and excitement. I feel conflicted about The Smeds and the Smoos. A Smed and a Smoo fall in love despite multiple warnings from their grandparents about why they should be avoiding each other, but unlike Romeo and Juliet this love story has a happy ending. 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.The story uses phonetically decodable words and rhymes throughout which would give children the opportunity to read the story for themselves and recognise word patterns. 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. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

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. 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.

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).