 | This articlemay contain an excessive amount of intricatedetail that may only interest a particular audience. Please help byspinning off orrelocating any relevant information, and removing excessive detail that may be againstWikipedia's inclusion policy.(October 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Julia Donaldson | |
|---|---|
 Donaldson at the 2011 Children´s and Young Adult Program of theBerlin International Literature Festival | |
| Born | Julia Catherine Shields (1948-09-16)16 September 1948 (age 77) |
| Occupation | Writer, playwright |
| Alma mater | University of Bristol |
| Period | 1993–present |
| Genre | Children's fiction, drama, and songs (retail and schools markets) |
| Notable works | The Gruffalo Room on the Broom Stick Man |
| Spouse | [1] |
| Children | 3 (1 deceased) |
| Relatives | Lola Young (great-niece) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Julia Catherine DonaldsonCBE (née Shields; born 16 September 1948) is an English writer and playwright, and the 2011–2013Children's Laureate. She is best known for her popular rhyming stories for children, especially those illustrated byAxel Scheffler, which includeThe Gruffalo,Room on the Broom andStick Man. She originally wrote songs for children's television but has concentrated on writing books since the words of one of her songs, "A Squash and a Squeeze", were made into a children's book in 1993. Of her 184 published works, 64 are widely available in bookshops. The remaining 120 are intended for school use and include her Songbirds phonic reading scheme, which is part of theOxford University Press'sOxford Reading Tree.
In January 2025, Donaldson became Britain's best-selling author, surpassingJ.K. Rowling by some 600,000 sales.[3]
Donaldson was born on 16 September 1948,[4][5] and was brought up inHampstead,London, with her younger sister.[6] The family occupied a Victorian three-storey house nearHampstead Heath.
Both parents were musical. Poetry also featured strongly in Donaldson's early life; she was givenThe Book of a Thousand Poems by her father when she was five years old, and her grandmother introduced her toEdward Lear’s nonsense rhymes. Donaldson attended New End Primary School and thenCamden School for Girls. During her childhood and adolescence, she acted (understudying the fairies in Shakespeare'sA Midsummer Night's Dream at TheOld Vic where she made the acquaintance of a youngJudi Dench andTom Courtenay), sang with the Children's Opera Group, and learned the piano.
A skilled linguist, she studied French and German at school and later acquired Italian through a summer tutoring job with a family in Naples, so that by the age of 19, she had a proficient grasp of all three languages.[7]
 | This section of abiography of a living persondoes notinclude anyreferences or sources. Please help by addingreliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourcedmust be removed immediately. Find sources: "Julia Donaldson" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Donaldson studied Drama and French atBristol University (1967–1970), graduating with a 2:1 honours degree. During her time there she acted in departmental productions and learnt the guitar. In 1968, she and her friend Maureen Purkis took part in the playI am not the Eiffel Tower with music composed byColin Sell, an accomplished young pianist who was studying Spanish and Portuguese at Bristol and who has gone on to appear in BBC Radio 4'sI'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Sell's roommate Malcolm Donaldson, a medical student who played left-handed guitar and was a keen amateur actor, came to see the show and subsequently teamed up with Sell, Donaldson and Purkis to sing in the pubs during Bristol UniversityRag Week in early 1969. Almost immediately after this Donaldson and Purkis were seconded to live in Paris for six months as part of their degree course where they sang and played their guitars to café audiences for money. Malcolm joined them in the summer and the trio performed various songs by theBeatles and from musicals includingHair.
After several weeks of busking in Paris, Malcolm followed Julia and Maureen to the Avignon Festival. Here his attempts to sleep on their youth hostel floor led to eviction and the trio moved out, sleeping in a camp site and even a field, by which time a deep friendship had been formed. During their time in Paris the group were spotted by a French entrepreneur who auditioned them. While nothing came of this Donaldson and Purkis penned a tune to the traditional French poem "Metamorphosis" specifically for the audition, the first time that Donaldson had composed a song for an occasion (apart from the childhood shows).
By December 1969 Julia and Malcolm had become an item. They began to supply cabaret for the occasional university social event, and in 1970 they visited America, travelling by Greyhound bus from the East to the West coast and busking in Seattle and San Francisco. On their return the duo played in restaurants and began to participate in events as diverse as theCrystal Palace Children's Day, an Easter Parade in London and a dental congress dinner – with Julia Donaldson composing songs specially for these occasions.
The couple continued to busk in Europe during holidays, including in France and Italy, with Julia Donaldson writing "The French Busking Song" in French, and "The Spaghetti Song" in Italian. By 1971, Donaldson was working in London at Michael Joseph publishers as a secretary to Anthea Joseph but was also given considerable leeway as a junior editor. At weekends she and Malcolm took part in the Bristol Street Theatre, a group of mainly postgraduate students inspired by the late playwright David Illingworth. The group devised simple, unscripted plays which could be performed in the playgrounds of poor council estates and which recruited children from the audience to take over some of the roles. This was to have a lasting effect on Donaldson's interaction with children in her own shows as an established children's writer.
The couple were married in September 1972, Donaldson composing an operetta which she and Malcolm, their best man Colin Sell, the bridesmaids and ushers performed at the reception inBurgh House, Hampstead. A picture of the wedding is on display in the house today. Donaldson then worked as a secretary inRadio Bristol where she also had a weekly slot as short story producer/editor. In August 1974 the couple moved toBrighton where Donaldson had been appointed as editor at Robert Tyndall, a small book publishers. Shortly before this she had sent a tape of songs to BBC Children's Television, and between 1974 and 1978 she wrote regularly for the programmePlay Away, her songs being performed by actors and musicians includingToni Arthur,Floella Benjamin,Johnny Ball,Brian Cant,Derek Griffiths and musical directorJonathan Cohen. She also wrote occasional songs forPlay School and for theWatch with Mother programmePlay Board. Some of Donaldson's songs – "The Luck of the Game", "Funny Face" and "A Squash and a Squeeze" – were recorded at this time for BBC albums.
Julia and Malcolm were involved in the Brighton folk club scene, performing floor spots of comedy songs written by Donaldson, often within days of being composed. The songs were variously influenced byFlanders and Swann, topical affairs and traditional folk tales (the latter inspiring spoofs such as "The Ballad of Jack Nancy and Fred", and "Folk Alphabet"). Their vinyl albumFirst Fourteen(1977) featured many of these songs, while others were included much later on the CDSecond Fourteen (2006, whenFirst Fourteen was also re-mastered as a CD).
Donaldson composed two musicals for children:King Grunt's Cake (1976) andPirate on the Pier (1980) which she and a small cast performed both in London and Brighton. Influenced by their Bristol Street Theatre experience, Donaldson ran a Saturday-morning workshop for children inPortslade from 1974 to 1976. During these sessions a simple play would be devised, followed by making of props and costumes, rehearsal and then a performance.
In 1977/6 Donaldson studied at Brighton College of Education for aPostgraduate Certificate in Education and worked for two years as an English teacher atSt Mary's Hall in Brighton until the arrival of their first child Hamish in 1978, after which she never returned to full-time employment. The couple moved to Lyon in France for a year (1979–80) with Hamish, returning to Brighton where their second son Alastair was born in 1981.[7]
In 1983, the family of four moved to Bristol where Malcolm Donaldson was appointed as Senior Registrar in Paediatrics to United Bristol Hospitals. By then the television writing had dried up and the folk scene had waned. Julia Donaldson wrote and sang a few topical songs for adult radio programmes (including one about the Guinness Distillers take-over bid, which appeared on Financial World Tonight), did occasional amateur acting and street theatre, and wrote the songs for the Kingsdown community playNine Trees Shade. She also became a volunteer in Hamish's primary school, hearing the children read aloud. She devised short plays with the right number of parts for a reading group, rotating the roles until each child had read the whole play. The piece would then be performed to the entire class. This approach seemed to build confidence in reading aloud as well as being enjoyable, and Donaldson stored the plays in a drawer for possible future use.
In 1989, Malcolm was appointed to Glasgow University as senior lecturer in child health and the family, now five following the arrival of Jerry in 1987, moved to Bearsden.
Once in Glasgow, Donaldson 'pitched' once again for song-writing commissions with the BBC. Between 1990 and 1994 she wrote for various programmes includingThinkabout Science (two series) andPlaydays, composing songs for presenters and puppets (such as Lizzie and the Whybird) to sing.
In 1991, Donaldson was contacted byMethuen Publishing to ask if the words of her song "A Squash and a Squeeze", which she had written for the BBC'sPlayboard programme in 1975, could be made into a picture book for children. The book was published in 1993, with illustrations by a German artistAxel Scheffler, who was living in London. Publication ofA Squash and a Squeeze was a pivotal event for Donaldson. It made her realise that her song-writing talent could be applied to story-writing, and gave her the confidence to open her drawer of simple plays for schoolchildren and to send some samples to an educational publisher. Between 1993 and 1999 she wrote extensively for Heinemann and Ginn, including plays such asBirthday Surprise for younger classes andTop of the Mops for reluctant teenage readers, as well as re-tellings of traditional tales. During this time Donaldson started visiting Scottish schools and libraries, occasionally accompanied by Malcolm Donaldson and his guitar.[7]
From the 1990s when Donaldson was extensively visiting school and libraries, she extended techniques learned in Bristol and Brighton to encourage children to act and sing with her. Following the publication ofThe Gruffalo she was invited to book festivals, participating in theEdinburgh International Book Festival every year from 1999 onwards, and appearing regularly at Hay, Cheltenham and Bath festivals, as well as at many theatres.
| This section of abiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Julia Donaldson" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
In 1995, while looking for ideas for an educational series of plays based on traditional tales, Donaldson came across a version of a Chinese story about a little girl who escapes being eaten by a tiger by claiming to be the fearsome Queen of the Jungle and inviting him to walk behind her. The tiger misinterprets the terror of the various animals they meet as being related to her rather than him, and flees. Donaldson sensed that this story could be developed into more than an educational item and returned to it later as a possible basis for a picture book. She decided to make the girl a mouse, and chose a fox, owl and snake as woodland rather than jungle creatures but wasn't satisfied with lines like "They ought to know, they really should / There aren't any tigers in this wood".
She then thought of the idea of a monster whose name would end in O (to rhyme with "doesn't he know"). "Gr" sounded suitably fierce as the start to the monster's name, and filling in the middle with "uffal" gave the name Gruffalo, conjuring up the pleasing image of a monster reminiscent of a buffalo but a lot more scary. Even then,The Gruffalo proved nigh impossible to write but, encouraged by her son Alastair, Donaldson persisted with her idea that the monster, rather than existing in the Deep Dark Wood from the outset, should be a figment of the Mouse's imagination, employed to scare off the fox, owl and snake but then turning out to be a reality. A further objection to the original draft was made by Jesse (by now called Jerry) who asked, "Mum, why don't the fox, owl and snake just eat the mouse on the spot?" This flaw was resolved by inserting the question "Where are you meeting him? (The Gruffalo)" and the reply "Here, by these rocks / And his favourite food is roasted fox", with similar lines for the remaining two predators.
The Gruffalo was sent to Reid Books in 1995. Donaldson sent the text to Axel Scheffler, whom she had met only once or twice, briefly, following the publication ofA Squash and a Squeeze. Within days Macmillan Children's Books made an offer to publishThe Gruffalo, which was illustrated by Scheffler and published in 1999.
The Gruffalo was an immediate success, going on to win several awards, including theSmarties Prize (1999). It has subsequently been translated into more than 50 languages, sold over 10 million copies worldwide, and has given rise to stage and screen productions by Tall Stories[8] and Magic Light Pictures.The Gruffalo was followed by more Donaldson/Scheffler publications by Macmillan:Monkey Puzzle (2000),[9]Room on the Broom (2001),The Smartest Giant in Town (2002),The Snail and the Whale (2003),The Gruffalo's Child, featuring an only child Gruffalo with a wooden stick doll plus the original cast of Gruffalo, Mouse, Fox, Snake and Owl (2004), andCharlie Cook's Favourite Book (2005). In 2006 Scheffler moved to Alison Green Books who published the duo'sTiddler (2007),Stick Man (2008),Tabby McTat (2009),Zog (2010),The Highway Rat (2011),Superworm (2012),The Scarecrows' Wedding (2014),Zog and the Flying Doctors (2017) andThe Smeds and the Smoos (2019).
Since publication ofThe Gruffalo, Donaldson has worked with other illustrators including Lydia Monks, David Roberts and Nick Sharratt, who has also illustrated two books of poems by Donaldson,Crazy Mayonnaisy Mum andWriggle and Roar. Lydia Monks has illustrated thePrincess Mirror-Belle trilogy, a series of books for 7- to 10-year-olds about a boastful girl who is the mirror reflection of an ordinary girl called Ellen. The inspiration for Mirror-Belle was Hamish's imaginary childhood friend Sammy, who lived behind a wardrobe mirror.
Donaldson is also the author ofThe Giants and theJoneses for children aged 8–12 years. Her teenage novelRunning on the Cracks is set in Glasgow and traces the adventures of orphaned half-Chinese Leo (aged 15) who is fleeing from her dodgy uncle in England and trying to find her father's estranged family. She befriends a schoolboy called Finlay, who is loosely based on Donaldson's youngest son Jerry during his days as a paper boy.Running on the Cracks, whose element of mental illness is drawn from Hamish's hospital experiences won theNasen award in 2011 for its sympathetic and inclusive portrait of Mary, who befriends Leo but then descends into a severe relapse of her bi-polar condition.
Donaldson has also written a phonic reading scheme of short stories comprising 60 books ofSongbird Phonics, published byOxford University Press.[10]
A typical public event consists of acting out (more or less word-for-word) four stories, and singing three or four songs (mostly from Donaldson's three albums of songs –The Gruffalo Song and Other Songs,Room on the Broom and Other Songs andThe Gruffalo's Child and Other Songs). There is always a strong element of audience participation, with children (and sometimes their parents) invited on stage to act parts in the stories. Malcolm Donaldson almost always takes part in the events, and they are also often joined by other performers including family members.
Donaldson has also performed jointly with her illustrators, particularly Axel Scheffler and Lydia Monks. She has performed the Donaldson/Scheffler books not only in English but also in German on several tours and at theBerlin Festival. In 2007, when Malcolm took a sabbatical from his job, he joined Julia on a World Tour, acting and singing in Bermuda, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and America.
In 2011, Donaldson was appointedChildren's Laureate succeeding the illustratorAnthony Browne.[11] In keeping with her interest in acting and singing Donaldson has set out to encourage children to perform poetry, plays and dramatised readings to generate a love of books and of reading. Accordingly, she has created a series ofPlays to Read for six characters to be performed in the classroom, written by herself and by other writers such asGeraldine McCaughrean,Jeanne Willis,Vivian French, Steve Skidmore and Steve Barlow. The first 36 of these plays, for early readers, were published by Pearson (2013) with a further 24 plays for older primary-school children to following later in the year. She has also compiled an anthology ofPoems to Perform by groups of children (to be published by Macmillan in 2013) and has created an interactive website called picturebookplays.co.uk which gives guidance as to how selected picture books can be turned into classroom plays.
In her laureate role Donaldson has campaigned passionately against library cuts and closures, writing articles, meeting ministers and – with Malcolm Donaldson – embarking on a 6-week tour of UK libraries in autumn 2012. In all of the 38 libraries the visiting children were requested to perform a short play or song based on a picture book, as well as joining in Donaldson's own stories and songs. The tour was designed to celebrate libraries as a precious resource at a time many were threatened with closure.[12]
In her 30s, Donaldson was diagnosed with “cookie-bite” hearing loss, which leaves a bite-shaped hole in the mid-range of the audible spectrum, making it difficult for her to hear some speech and music, and she is helped by lip reading.[13]
Malcolm Donaldson, Julia's husband, was a consultantpaediatrician.[14] The couple previously resided inBearsden,East Dunbartonshire[15] and, in 2014, moved toSteyning,West Sussex.[16] They have three sons, the eldest of whom, Hamish, hadSchizoaffective disorder and died by suicide in 2003 at the age of 25.[17] She credited him with inspiring some of her imaginative writings.[13] Malcolm died from cancer on 22 September 2024, at the age of 75.[1]
Her great-niece is British singerLola Young.[18]
Donaldson is a patron of ArtLink Central, a charity which places artists in disadvantaged communities,[2][19] and of Bookbug, a programme run by theScottish Book Trust and funded by theScottish Government, which gifts over 500,000 books to children aged 0–5 in Scotland every year, encouraging parents to share books with their children from birth.[20] In addition she is a patron ofStorybook Dads, a UK charity which helps serving prisoners to send recordings of themselves reading bedtime stories to their children in order to maintain connections with some of the 200,000 children affected by parental imprisonment.[21] She is also patron of Monmouth's Savoy Cinema.[22]
| This section of abiography of a living personneeds additionalcitations forverification. Please help by addingreliable sources.Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced orpoorly sourcedmust be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentiallylibelous. Find sources: "Julia Donaldson" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2019) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
She was appointedMember of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the2011 Birthday Honours for services to literature.[23] She was promoted toCommander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the2019 New Year Honours.[23][24] She was elected aFellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.[25]
She was awarded honorary doctorates by theUniversity of Bristol in 2011 and theUniversity of Glasgow in 2012.
| Year | Title | ISBN | Illustrator | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1993 | A Squash and a Squeeze | ISBN 1-4050-0477-0 | Axel Scheffler | |
| 1998 | Books and Crooks (Play) | ISBN 978-0-7487-3656-0 | ||
| 1999 | The Gruffalo | ISBN 0-333-71093-2 | Axel Scheffler | |
| 2000 | Monkey Puzzle | ISBN 0-333-72001-6 | Axel Scheffler | |
| Hide-and-Seek Pig (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-0-333-96625-9 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Postman Bear (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-0-333-96624-2 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Fox's Socks (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-0-333-96623-5 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Rabbit's Nap (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1-4052-1788-0 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2002 | Room on the Broom | ISBN 0-333-90338-2 | Axel Scheffler | |
| The Smartest Giant in Town | ISBN 0-333-96396-2 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Night Monkey, Day Monkey | ISBN 978-0-7497-4893-7 | Lucy Richards | ||
| 2003 | The Snail and the Whale | ISBN 0-333-98224-X | Axel Scheffler | |
| The Dinosaur's Diary | ISBN 0-141-31382-X | |||
| 2004 | One Ted Falls Out of Bed | ISBN 0-333-94782-7 | Anna Currey | |
| The Gruffalo's Child | ISBN 1-4050-2045-8 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Giants and the Joneses | ISBN 0-8050-7805-3 | Greg Swearingen | ||
| The Magic Paintbrush | ISBN 978-0-333-96443-9 | Joel Stewart | ||
| The Wrong Kind of Bark | ISBN 1-4052-1062-1 | Garry Parsons | ||
| Brick-a-Breck | ISBN 0-7136-6441-X | Philippe Dupasquier | ||
| Bombs and Blackberries | ISBN 0-7502-4125-X | Thomas Docherty | ||
| The Head in the Sand: A Roman Play | ISBN 0-7502-4127-6 | Ross Collins | ||
| 2005 | Chocolate Mousse for Greedy Goose | ISBN 1-405-02190-X | Nick Sharratt | |
| Charlie Cook's Favourite Book | ISBN 978-1-4050-3469-2 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Gruffalo Song and Other Songs | ISBN 1-4050-2234-5 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Quick Brown Fox Club | ISBN 1-4052-1268-3 | Lucy Richards | ||
| Sharing a Shell | ISBN 978-1-4050-2048-0 | Lydia Monks | ||
| Spinderella | ISBN 978-1-4052-8272-7 | Sebastien Braun | ||
| Wriggle and Roar | ISBN 1-4050-2166-7 | Nick Sharratt | ||
| Crazy Mayonnaisy Mum | ISBN 0-3304-1490-9 | Nick Sharratt | ||
| Princess Mirror-Belle | ISBN 0-3304-1530-1 | Lydia Monks | ||
| Princess Mirror-Belle and the Magic Shoes | ISBN 1-4050-4867-0 | Lydia Monks | ||
| Princess Mirror-Belle and the Flying Horse | ISBN 0-3304-3795-X | Lydia Monks | ||
| 2006 | The Princess and the Wizard | ISBN 978-1-4050-5313-6 | Lydia Monks | |
| Room on the Broom and Other Songs | ISBN 978-1-4050-9101-5 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Rosie's Hat | ISBN 978-1-4050-0007-9 | Anna Currey | ||
| Hippo Has a Hat | ISBN 978-1-4050-2192-0 | Nick Sharratt | ||
| Play Time! A Selection of Plays | ISBN 0-3304-4595-2 | |||
| 2007 | Follow the Swallow | ISBN 978-1-4052-1788-0 | Martin Ursell | |
| Tiddler | ISBN 978-0-439-94377-2 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Tyrannosaurus Drip | ISBN 978-1-4050-9000-1 | David Roberts | ||
| 2008 | One Mole Digging a Hole | ISBN 978-0-2307-0647-7 | Nick Sharratt | |
| Stick Man | ISBN 978-1-4071-0882-7 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2009 | Toddle Waddle | ISBN 978-0-230-70648-4 | Nick Sharratt | |
| What the Ladybird Heard | ISBN 978-0-2307-0650-7 | Lydia Monks | ||
| Tabby McTat | ISBN 978-1-4071-0924-4 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Troll | ISBN 978-0-230-01793-1 | David Roberts | ||
| Running on the Cracks | ISBN 978-1-4052-2233-4 | Donaldson's first novel for teenagers | ||
| 2010 | Cave Baby | ISBN 978-0-3305-2276-2 | Emily Gravett | |
| Zog | ISBN 978-1-4071-1556-6 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2011 | Freddie and the Fairy | ISBN 978-0-3305-1118-6 | Karen George | |
| The Rhyming Rabbit | ISBN 978-0-2307-4103-4 | Lydia Monks | ||
| The Highway Rat | ISBN 978-1-4071-2437-7 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Gruffalo's Child and Other Songs | ISBN 978-0-2307-6173-5 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Jack and the Flumflum Tree | ISBN 978-0-230-71023-8 | David Roberts | ||
| 2012 | Goat Goes to Playgroup | ISBN 978-1447254843 | Nick Sharratt | |
| The Singing Mermaid | ISBN 978-0230-75044-9 | Lydia Monks | ||
| Superworm | ISBN 978-1-4071-3204-4 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| The Paper Dolls | ISBN 978-0-2307-4108-9 | Rebecca Cobb | ||
| The Snake Who Came to Stay | ISBN 978-1-7811-2008-8 | Hannah Shaw | ||
| Mr Birdsnest and the House Next Door | ISBN 978-1-7811-2005-7 | Hannah Shaw | ||
| 2013 | Sugarlump and the Unicorn | ISBN 978-1-4472-4019-8 | Lydia Monks | |
| The Further Adventures of the Owl and the Pussy-cat | ISBN 978-0-1413-3288-8 | Charlotte Voake | ||
| 2014 | The Flying Bath | ISBN 978-0-2307-4260-4 | David Roberts | |
| The Scarecrows' Wedding | ISBN 978-1-4071-4441-2 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2015 | What the Ladybird Heard Next | ISBN 9781447275954 | Lydia Monks | |
| 2016 | The Detective Dog | ISBN 978-1-5098-0159-6 | Sara Ogilvie | |
| Princess Mirror-Belle and Prince Precious Paws | ISBN 9781447285649 | Lydia Monks | ||
| 2017 | Zog and the Flying Doctors | ISBN 978-1-4071-7350-4 | Axel Scheffler | |
| The Everywhere Bear | ISBN 978-1-4472-8073-6 | Rebecca Cobb | ||
| The Ugly Five | ISBN 978-1-4071-7419-8 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2018 | Animalphabet | ISBN 9780525554158 | Sharon King-Chai | |
| What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday | ISBN 978-1509837335 | Lydia Monks | ||
| The Cook and the King | ISBN 978-1-5098-1377-3 | David Roberts | ||
| 2019 | The Smeds and the Smoos | ISBN 978-1407188898 | Axel Scheffler | |
| 2020 | The Hospital Dog | ISBN 978-1509868315 | Sara Ogilvie | |
| 2021 | Cat's Cookbook (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1-5290-3436-3 | Axel Scheffler | |
| Squirrel's Snowman (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1529034370 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2022 | The Baddies | ISBN 978-0702303517 | Axel Scheffler | |
| Badger's Band (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1-5290-3439-4 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| Mole's Spectacles (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1529034387 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2023 | The Oak Tree | ISBN 978-0702324352 | Victoria Sandøy | |
| Dormouse Has a Cold (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1035006908 | Axel Scheffler | ||
| 2024 | Frog's Day Out (Tales from Acorn Wood) | ISBN 978-1035006885 | Axel Scheffler | |
| Jonty Gentoo - The Adventures of a Penguin | ISBN 978-0702329432 | Axel Scheffler |
Media related toJulia Donaldson at Wikimedia Commons| Cultural offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Children's Laureate of the United Kingdom 2011–2013 | Succeeded by |
