Meet the author

Julia Donaldson.

Writer · United Kingdom · b. 1948

Julia Donaldson: writer of The Gruffalo, Room on the Broom and Stick Man — the rhyming picture-book engine of British childhood for the last twenty-five years, almost always with Axel Scheffler on art.

Julia Donaldson is a British author born in 1948, best known as the writer of The Gruffalo (1999), the rhyming picture book that became a generational staple alongside its sequel The Gruffalo's Child. Her body of work, Room on the Broom, Stick Man, The Snail and the Whale, Zog, Tiddler, Tabby McTat, Superworm, is built on tight rhyming meter, gentle peril, and warm endings, almost all illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Donaldson was Children's Laureate 2011–2013 and her books anchor the picture-book shelves of virtually every UK home and nursery. Read-aloud quality is exceptional. A core-corpus author for ages 2–7; her books reward repeated reading and stand up to dozens of bedtime rounds.