Published just in time for Halloween, I had great hopes for this story featuring a ghost and a witch (and a troll).

The Baddies: a wickedly funny picture book from the creators of The The Baddies: a wickedly funny picture book from the creators of

Julia and Axel are the team that have created picture book favourites such as The Gruffalo, Stick Man, Zog and Highway Rat - all of which have been made into animated films premiering on BBC1 Christmas Day. We want a song about throwing crumpled-up wrapping paper into the bin” was a typical request from the BBC. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. When a little girl moves into a nearby cottage, the Baddies can’t wait to scare her out of her wits. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes.

They are always so much fun to read with the little people in my life and the illustrations are always bright, cheerful and fun. I liked this book - the rhymes and rhythms were almost consistent - a few areas where the scansion didn't work for me. The witch, troll, and ghost are more silly than scary, making this an ideal Halloween read-aloud for the early elementary grades. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. It's decent enough, with bright illustrations, some good rhymes and a brown skinned girl on the front (instead of the usual pink), but this is a mid-range effort in the Donaldson/Scheffler canon.

The Baddies: the wickedly funny picture book from the creators of The The Baddies: the wickedly funny picture book from the creators of

The drawings as ever are full of characterful mischief and children will find much to see in them - a Gruffalo lurking on a page, for example. When reading it to my son, it was hard to make it interesting and it did not captivate him in the way her books usually do. Famous for her use of rhyming verse, Julia Donaldson CBE is one of the most popular children's authors of our time and it's easy to see why.I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. But the little girl quickly shows them that you don’t have to be big to be brave, and baddies don’t always win. The baddies devise different ways to scare her but are unsuccessful as she shows them kindness and understanding.

The Baddies - Julia Donaldson The Baddies - Julia Donaldson

I think her reactions were genuine and she was just doing what felt natural in the moment--which makes it even funnier to me, that she was thwarting them without even trying!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. One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. You have to understand that when I see a new Julia Donaldson picture book, I'm am fully prepared to be blown away by her story. Each individual attempt was met with a surprise act from their neighbor, and the results was complete failure by the baddies.

The Baddies by Julia Donaldson | Goodreads The Baddies by Julia Donaldson | Goodreads

I grew up in a tall Victorian London house with my parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (who was really a prince in disguise. Your child will giggle their way through this comic tale of three very bad, silly, and completely hopeless storybook characters who dare each other to steal a hanky-chief from a young girl walking through their woods. I was very interested to see a ghost on the cover and throughout who bares resemblance with Marley’s Ghost from Dickens’ famous tale - I think it’s amazing that when the young children come across A Christmas Carol (which the majority in England will due to the GCSE spec) they might recognise the ghost after having The Baddies as a staple household item.With Julia Donaldson’s (author of The Gruffalo) trademark quirky humour and rhyming text and Axel Scheffler’s detailed illustrations, there are lots of fun things to spot as you read and reread the text. I really enjoy getting the children in the audience to help me act out the stories and sing the songs. Captivating, full of opportunities for giggles and even a story for the bigger children… (yes adults that’s you! My only question is why are the endpapers purple with white polka dots, when the handkerchief that was the main element in the story was blue with white polka dots? I’d already created a number of villains – among them the Highway Rat and Wizard Lizard, but never more than one in each book.