It’s been over two decades since a “brown furry beast with purple prickles all over his back” made children’s book author Julia Donaldson a “household name”, said Laura Harding in The Independent. Now, she is back with a third instalment in her “witty and smart” Gruffalo series. “Gruffalo Granny” sees the Gruffalo and his daughter venture into the “deep dark wood” to source and prepare a special meal for grandma. Donaldson’s prose is as “pleasing as it ever was” and her long-time collaborator Axel Scheffler turns in some “incomparable” illustrations. “It was worth the wait.”
Donaldson is no one-beast wonder, though; she has written plenty of other enchanting children’s books. Here are our top picks.
Stick Man
This tale about a stick who is torn away from his family and must make an “Odyssean journey” home is “just about as epic as picture books get”, said Stuart Heritage in The Guardian. At one point, he approaches “what seems like certain death” – an “impressive” moment “in any story” but “doubly so” in a book for toddlers.
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The Snail and the Whale
It’s “impossible” to separate Donaldson’s rhyming text about a tiny snail who hitches a ride on the tail of a whale from Scheffler’s incredible pictures, said Heritage in The Guardian. “Quite frankly, the whole thing reads like a love letter between them.” It’s one of their “very best” collaborations.
The Highway Rat
A “greedy rat” rides along the highway, terrorising other animals and stealing their food in this “swaggeringly illustrated” book, said Marianne Levy in The i Paper. “Nuts, milk, clover – nothing is safe from his dastardly paws”. That is, until he crosses paths with a “devious duck who lures him into an echoing trap”. Donaldson herself has said this gallopingly rhythmic tale is one of her favourites.
The Paper Dolls
No Scheffler artwork on this one but Rebecca Cobb’s “gentle illustrations” are the perfect accompaniment for this “exquisitely subtle” story, said Levy in The i Paper. A chain of paper dolls “dance through the house and garden, singing”, until a boy “snips them into confetti”. He thinks they’re “gone for ever” but he’s wrong: the dolls “have flown into the little girl’s memory”, where they dance on. “Are you crying yet?”
The Gruffalo
Our list would, of course, not be complete without mentioning “The Gruffalo”. Published in 1999, it quickly became a “publishing phenomenon”, said Sophie Knight in Closer. The “simplicity” of the tale about a “clever mouse escaping the clutches” of other animals by inventing a terrifying monster, combined with Scheffler’s “wonderful” pictures, have kept it a “firm family favourite” ever since.
