Julia Donaldson

Dame Julia Donaldson (born 1948) is an English children's writer and playwright, best known for The Gruffalo (1999) and her rhyming picture books illustrated by Axel Scheffler. She was born Julia Catherine Shields in Hampstead, London, on 16 September 1948.

Before her books, Donaldson worked in publishing, taught, and wrote songs for BBC children's programmes such as Play Away. Her first book, A Squash and a Squeeze (1993), began as one of those songs and was her first collaboration with Scheffler. The Gruffalo, published by Macmillan Children's Books on 23 March 1999, won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and the Blue Peter award for best book to read aloud; it has been translated into more than 100 languages and was adapted as a BBC One animated film on Christmas Day 2009, which received an Academy Award nomination. Later picture books with Scheffler include Room on the Broom (2001), The Snail and the Whale (2003), The Gruffalo's Child (2004), Stick Man (2008), Zog (2010) and Superworm (2012). She has also worked with illustrators including Helen Oxenbury, Emily Gravett and Victoria Sandøy, and writes plays and early readers.

She was Children's Laureate from 2011 to 2013, was appointed MBE in 2011 and CBE in the 2019 New Year Honours, and is now a Dame. In January 2025 she was reported to have overtaken J.K. Rowling as Britain's best-selling author.

For collectors

The key book is the Macmillan Children's Books first edition of The Gruffalo (London, 1999); the American edition came from Viking Children's Books. A Squash and a Squeeze (1993) is of interest as her first book. Royal Mail marked the Gruffalo's 20th anniversary in 2019 with two sets of stamps, a sign of the book's standing in Britain.