When a little girl moves into a nearby cottage, the Baddies can’t wait to scare her out of her wits. But the little girl quickly shows them that you don’t have to be big to be brave, and baddies don’t always win. Each individual attempt was met with a surprise act from their neighbor, and the results was complete failure by the baddies. The witch, troll, and ghost are more silly than scary, making this an ideal Halloween read-aloud for the early elementary grades.

They are always so much fun to read with the little people in my life and the illustrations are always bright, cheerful and fun.

This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. 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 studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. Join our community to get personalised book suggestions, extracts straight to your inbox, 10% off RRPs, and to change children’s lives.

I was intrigued to see that the Ghost was very much drawn in the style of Jacob Marley from Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'. 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 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. 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. 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!I really enjoy getting the children in the audience to help me act out the stories and sing the songs. I’d already created a number of villains – among them the Highway Rat and Wizard Lizard, but never more than one in each book. Captivating, full of opportunities for giggles and even a story for the bigger children… (yes adults that’s you! Julia Donaldson has written some of the world's best-loved children's books, including modern classics The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo's Child, which together have sold over 25 million copies worldwide and have been translated into over one hundred languages. 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.