The brains behind The Gruffalo bring stories to life in Wolverhampton event

Organised by Wolverhampton Grammar School, children from 42 primary schools across the region gathered at Grand Station to explore the imaginative worlds that Julia and Lydia have created.

Children asked the creative pair questions about their work, sang songs, and helped act out montages of the stories, with the helping hands of their teachers.

Lydia also drew illustrations she showed to the children with a visualiser - which "the children love because it's like magic when they come on the screen" - and every child attempted a drawing of their own.

Julia, the author of picture books such as The Gruffalo, Zog, and Room on the Broom, said: "Writing children's books has been very organic for me.

"I wrote songs first, but there was more of a market for children and I had already written children's songs.

"I sent some children's songs to the BBC and they started commissioning me to write songs - then one of the songs, Squash and Squeeze got made into a book, which led me onto the books.

"Also we both have children so we've read stories to children and know what it's like - it's a very special time when you're reading a bedtime story to children. And it's quite nice as the author to snuggle in there with that love and get loved in return."

Lydia added: "I used to work for a lot of grown-up newspapers and magazines - The Telegraph and Tatler. For me it's a lot more fulfilling work than for working for the newspapers, which was all short and quick, and I wanted something more substantial.

"I got into illustrating by writing my own work and then illustrating them.

"The best books are ones that adults enjoy as well because you've got to get the parents onside - we've all hidden the books we hate so our children can't reach for them. So it's lovely that the parents seem to enjoy the books as well."

Julia's husband, Malcolm Donaldson, was also performing alongside his wife - both as a musician in songs and as an actor in recreations of his wife's work.

Performance played a big part in bringing the stories to life, and Julia has always had a taste for the theatrical, having understudied as a fairy at the Old Vic - where she met a young Judi Dench and Tom Courtenay.

While the aim of the event is to help encourage children to read, Julia is adamant that children read more fervently than adults.

She said: "You only have to look at the Harry Potter books and see the queues outside the bookshop - children are reading much more than adults and always have been. Perhaps we should be saying 'why aren't adults reading more books instead of being on their phone all the time?'"

The event was organised by Wolverhampton Grammar School. Head librarian Zoe Rowley said: "We already do a lot to promote reading for pleasure across Wolverhampton and the surrounding area, and this gave us a lovely opportunity to expand this work to a younger age group.

"When I mentioned this, [headteacher] Alex mentioned that Julia was one of his favourite authors and that his children grew up with those books, and we thought how lovely to bring Julia in to inspire a new generation to start reading."

Headteacher Alex Frazer said: "The most important thing is we're trying to inspire a love of reading for pleasure and inspire greater confidence in reading.

"If you take elements of performance, whether that's acting or musical performance, you take drawing, those can be some really fantastic ways into reading for children who might not see themselves as bookish types.

"We've realised just how young those good habits or absence of good habits can come around.

"This has been our first public event intended for a younger audience and it's been incredibly successful.

"We are immensely privileged to have capacity in our resourcing as an independent school and we firmly believe that the right thing to do with that capacity is to share it far and wide.

"Unfortunately, we do live in a time where budgets are squeezed - and sometimes it's library services in schools that do miss out."

Wolverhampton Grammar School organised the event with Authors Aloud UK, a company who organise school trips with children's authors, poets, illustrators, and storytellers.

Annie Everall, the director and founder, said: "Meeting an author can be a life-changing experience for children, because it can show them what reading really is.

"But it can also show them there will be kids in the audience who have a secret desire to want to write but think 'I couldn't do that', but some of those children will be the authors, the poets, the illustrators, the storytellers, the future.

"It's about showing children that reading is something for them. We try to bring stories to life."