About The Author

Julia Donaldson is the outrageously talented, prize-winning author of the world’s best-loved picture books, and was the 2011-2013 UK Children’s Laureate. Her books include The Troll, What the Ladybird Heard and the modern classic The Gruffalo, which has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over sixty languages. Julia also writes fiction as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live children’s shows are always in demand. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh.
Joel Stewart is a writer and illustrator of children’s books. He spent the earliest years of his life in a commune in the wilds of Yorkshire, and spent the rest of his childhood in the north of England. He now lives and works in London UK.

Alongside his own picture books and chapter books, he is known internationally as an illustrator for contemporary authors such as Julia Donaldson, Carol Ann Duffy, Jeanne Willis, and Michael Rosen, and for classic texts by authors such as Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll and J.M Barrie.

He is also known as the creator/director of the hit children’s animation series The Adventures of Abney & Teal, which he created, co-wrote, and directed under the guidance of Anne Wood and Ragdoll Productions LTD (creators of Tellytubbies and In the Night Garden).

Joel works in a variety of media, including digital, always with a love of drawing at the centre.