The Baddies: a wickedly funny picture book from the creators of The Gruffalo

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My only question is why are the endpapers purple with white polka dots, when the handkerchief that was the main element in the story was blue with white polka dots? But the little girl quickly shows them that you don’t have to be big to be brave, and baddies don’t always win. You have to understand that when I see a new Julia Donaldson picture book, I'm am fully prepared to be blown away by her story.

I really enjoy getting the children in the audience to help me act out the stories and sing the songs. The baddies devise different ways to scare her but are unsuccessful as she shows them kindness and understanding.Each individual attempt was met with a surprise act from their neighbor, and the results was complete failure by the baddies. With Julia Donaldson’s (author of The Gruffalo) trademark quirky humour and rhyming text and Axel Scheffler’s detailed illustrations, there are lots of fun things to spot as you read and reread the text. Captivating, full of opportunities for giggles and even a story for the bigger children… (yes adults that’s you! I was very interested to see a ghost on the cover and throughout who bares resemblance with Marley’s Ghost from Dickens’ famous tale - I think it’s amazing that when the young children come across A Christmas Carol (which the majority in England will due to the GCSE spec) they might recognise the ghost after having The Baddies as a staple household item. Her other books include Room on the Broom, Stick Man and Zog, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, The Hospital Dog, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie and the hugely successful What the Ladybird Heard adventures, illustrated by Lydia Monks.

The brand-new picture book from superstar author and illustrator Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler is a riot of slapstick fun and silliness. One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. The drawings as ever are full of characterful mischief and children will find much to see in them - a Gruffalo lurking on a page, for example. When a little girl moves into a nearby cottage, the Baddies can’t wait to scare her out of her wits.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. The witch, troll, and ghost are more silly than scary, making this an ideal Halloween read-aloud for the early elementary grades. Of course, the little mouse saves the day and rids the woods of our pesky villains, and we all sleep more soundly at night.

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 think her reactions were genuine and she was just doing what felt natural in the moment--which makes it even funnier to me, that she was thwarting them without even trying!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’d already created a number of villains – among them the Highway Rat and Wizard Lizard, but never more than one in each book. It's decent enough, with bright illustrations, some good rhymes and a brown skinned girl on the front (instead of the usual pink), but this is a mid-range effort in the Donaldson/Scheffler canon.