Greta is right to fight for planet Says Gruffalo creator Julia
Author’s Snail and Whale is
shows she puts on in schools and theatres.
She said: “It’s wonderful. They often say, ‘Thank you for so many hours of joy reading to the children,’ and I know what they mean because I have read to my children.
“But I am modest enough to not totally take all the credit for that, because it is the parents who love their children and the children who love their parents, and you sneak in there with your book and there is this rosy halo of comfort and love, so you have to be a little bit modest.”
And she is also proud when she hears her books have helped autistic children interact with friends and family.
She said: “I’m very often contacted about autistic children.
“I get ones saying, ‘My child didn’t talk or was autistic and couldn’t read
but learned with your books’. I’m sure other authors get them too,” she added, humbly.
And Julia knows exactly how hard parenting can be. Together with her doctor husband Malcolm, she brought up three sons, Hamish, Alastair and Jerry. But their lives were shattered when her troubled eldest child, Hamish, who had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, took his own life in 2003, aged 25.
The tragedy came shortly after Julia’s career really took off following the release of The Gruffalo in 1999.
Before becoming a children’s author, Julia was using her rhyming skills to write songs for children’s television.
She only made the switch to books in 1993 when a publisher contacted her asking if the words to her song, A Squash and a Squeeze, could be made into a children’s picture