Julia Donaldson interview: 'Face masks are very unfair if you're hard of hearing like me'

Julia Donaldson – author of 64 children’s books – usually bristles when people ask her whether she puts deliberate messages into her stories. “Mostly I just write adventures,” she says. “Or fables, if writing for smaller children.”

But even she can’t deny the parallels between the last nine months and her book Zog and the Flying Doctors, which is being presented in animated form on BBC One on Christmas Day.

“It has an infection that crosses species, from bird to king. It has a search for a cure. It even has a royal [a princess called Pearl who wants to be a doctor] who doesn’t want to be a royal any more,” she concurs. “And there is a bright orange character who is a bit like Trump, I suppose.”

The animation, in which Pearl is imprisoned by her uncle the King for helping sick animals instead of being a princess, only for her then to save the King’s life, was commissioned before the pandemic. But, as Donaldson notes, it’s not the first time a TV adaptation of one of her books has felt unexpectedly resonant.

“Last year they animated The Snail and the Whale [about a whale almost fatally disorientated by speedboats], which I wrote in 2003, and it did feel very timely because the environment and Greta Thunberg were very much in people’s minds,” she says. “Then again, a good picture book ought to have a universal theme.”

Watching the annual Donaldson animation (Zog and the Flying Doctors will be the eighth) has become a Christmas tradition akin to watching the Queen’s Speech. But then the 72-year-old Donaldson is so much a part of childhood that she has become woven almost as deeply as the Queen into the fabric of our lives.

The Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013, she’s sold 30 million books and has produced at least two a year since The Gruffalo became an overnight sensation in 1999. Many of her most popular books have been made into highly successful stage shows and she and her husband Malcolm, a paediatrician and folk guitarist, often go on the road to perform their own stage versions themselves.

Even lockdown didn’t stop her engaging with children: while most multimillionaire septuagenarian authors might have seen this year as an opportunity to put their feet up, Donaldson instead devoted the first few months of the pandemic to producing weekly videos in which she and Malcolm acted out versions of her books in their kitchen, using stuffed toys as props.

“Children weren’t going to school so it seemed a good opportunity to do something for them,” she says simply.

Donaldson may be known for writing delightful, whimsical rhyming stories about plucky mice, quick witted ladybirds and intrepid characters made out of sticks, but in person she is a pretty steely mix of political conviction and plain-talking common sense.

She is irked when people ask her if Pearl is a feminist hero for wanting to be a doctor instead of a princess, saying, “I hardly think it’s a groundbreaking story. It’s not like most children’s stories are full of girls sitting at home sewing. In fact, in the animated version they’ve made the mermaid character really girlie, which I love.”

She is passionate, though, about children and reading (she has written 120 books for use in schools, too).

“I know everyone keeps talking about how children have been reading more during the pandemic but, actually, I fear the social divide has simply become greater. Some children with bookish parents would have read a lot, but others may have not seen a book in months.”

Donaldson had quite a pleasant lockdown, she says, but one thing she doesn’t like is masks. “I have a hearing problem and probably rely on lip reading more than I realise. Masks are very unfair to the deaf community. If we have to wear masks they ought to have transparent bits and the government should pay for them.”

She pauses. “I’ve really stuck my neck out now. I’ll get accused of being a Trump supporter. One is almost afraid to give an opinion these days in case people will demolish it. Not that I’m on social media.”

Donaldson loathes social media. “It makes me worry about the human race, to be honest. Adults quickly looking at their phones all the time; sending very short little messages and tweets and pictures etc. I do worry about people losing the ability to immerse themselves in just one thing – a book, a conversation.

“People say children are on gadgets too much, but it’s more often the parents who are looking on their phone and the child dragging along as best they can.”

Donaldson herself grew up in Hampstead, north London, and enjoyed a childhood full of books and music. She used to perform plays with her sister in front of her parents, aunt, uncle and grandmother. It sounds idyllic but she quickly corrects me (there is something a bit stern and no nonsense about Donaldson, which catches you by surprise).

“Journalists keep describing my childhood as idyllic, but actually my dad had polio and so my mum had to do everything around the house, which meant we were left to our own devices an awful lot. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

Nonetheless, she remembers her grandmother reading her Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and Shakespeare and, as a member of the Children’s Opera group, she even performed as a fairy in an Old Vic production starring Judi Dench.

“I was so star-struck. I later went to see her at an outdoor show in Kenwood and she waved to me from the stage. My mum didn’t believe she had recognised me, but she had.”

Acting has always been as important to Donaldson as writing. She is a little bit cross that a new documentary about her to be shown on the BBC over Christmas suggests her performances are just a bit of fun.

“Actually we take them really seriously,” she says. She spent several years after university busking with Malcolm across Europe which led to a career as a singer and songwriter before she became an author.

Does she think her workshops and performances are a way of recapturing that bohemian part of herself? A way, even, of reclaiming her childhood?

“Yes, I think if you had an enjoyable childhood with lots of stories and acting and music, it’s only natural you would come back to it. But really it’s something I never really grew out of.”

I tell her my favourite book is The Paper Dolls, about a girl who makes a set of paper dolls with her mum, and then, a few decades later, a similar set with her own daughter, and that my daughter loves it because she loves the idea of being connected to the people who come before her and also after her.

“The idea of handing on what has been part of your childhood really appeals to me,” Donaldson agrees.

“In fact, that’s the subject of my Christmas Poem [Donaldson has this year written the annual poem that adorns the base of the Christmas Tree in Trafalgar Square].

“It’s written from the point of view of the tree itself and contains the lines ‘I cannot stay forever here. Another tree will come next year.’ So yes, that idea of things changing and continuing at the same time: to me it feels very important.”

Zog and The Flying Doctors is on BBC One on Christmas Day at 2.35pm