The Baddies: the wickedly funny picture book from the creators of Zog and Stick Man, now available in paperback!

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I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married.

You’ll have to ask the pig, I’m not responsible for my characters!” laughs Scheffler, and Donaldson nods: “It’s nice when children see things in the books I’m not aware of. You know they’re really looking at them.” We have sailed past our allotted time by now but I have one last question from my three-year-old: why, at the end of A Squash and a Squeeze, does the pig look angry but the other animals don’t? It should be funny and they shouldn't be too scary," says Axel Scheffler of the three baddies. "They're really ridiculous."I feel that's part of my job," adds Scheffler. And, as fans of their work know, there's always a picture of a gruffalo hidden somewhere in each of their books. Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! My novel THE GIANTS AND THE JONESES is going to be made into a film by the same team who made the Harry Potter movies, and I have written three books of stories about the anarchic PRINCESS MIRROR-BELLE who appears from the mirror and disrupts the life of an otherwise ordinary eight-year-old. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers. One thing Donaldson and Scheffler understand after all these years is that kids like to be scared — just not too much. Malcolm, whom she mentions frequently, is the only person with whom she shares early ideas and drafts, discussing things while walking near their home in West Sussex, and showing him “half-baked manuscripts”. Here, I’ll show you,” she says standing up, and Malcolm – keen as ever – runs over to perform alongside her. In Germany, it would be unthinkable to have such incompetent, cynical and corrupt people in government Axel Scheffler

No, no!” cries Donaldson, while Scheffler says simultaneously “Oh that’s a good idea!” He then ponders how he might have pulled that off, Donaldson’s objections notwithstanding: “I should have drawn one of the baddies with that [Boris Johnson] hair.” What I like about Julia's text is the subtlety of her messaging," says Scheffler. The Baddies is about kindness, and how being good is better than being bad at the end of the day. But mostly, it's just supposed to be fun. Scheffler found his way into art by being political. “When I was growing up in Hamburg, there was the Vietnam war going on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and there are teenage drawings of mine in which I reflected on that, so that was my formation,” he says. “Oh! I didn’t know that,” says Donaldson, turning to him in surprise. “Now I draw rabbits and mice,” he says and they look at each other and laugh.Ongoing Covid restrictions, reduced air and freight capacity, high volumes and winter weather conditions are all impacting transportation and local delivery across the globe.

In The Baddies, the witch, the troll and the ghost come a cropper when a little girl refuses to be scared by them. Although it’s never mentioned in the story, she is of south Asian heritage. Is this the first time they’ve featured a non-caucasian main character? My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. Does she see books as a way for children to learn about the world around them, or an oasis in which they can escape from it? Why? It’s because she gets to marry her husband Malcolm all over again. She plays Betty O’Barley (“I give her an Irish accent”) and he plays Harry O’Hay, the scarecrow whose love is threatened by the arrival of the dastardly Reginald Drake. “I like it because it’s got that Hollywood love triangle.”The spark happens when when when the pictures come together with the text in the book," explains Scheffler. "We're very different people and it's amazing that it works so well." When Julia’s writing, I’m like a father who is at the birth of a child. I can’t have the baby, so I’m on hand to make the tea,” Malcolm says. The pair say they don't work on their books at the same time. "I kind of beaver away all by myself," Donaldson says. If she thinks she's written a story that Scheffler would like to draw, she'll send him the finished manuscript.