Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My castaway this week is the children's writer Julia Donaldson. Her quirky rhyming creations

are relished by children and grown-ups around the world and she's the recipient of

countless literary awards. The author now of more than 150 books, popular success came

comparatively late and only after she had already worked as a teacher, a publisher, in

local radio and at times as a busker. The Gruffalo is her best known

creation. Published ten years ago it's become a modern classic selling more than

four million copies it's been turned into a stage show and now a film.

Looking back, she says, it's odd to think that he, the Gruffalo, nearly didn't exist at all.

The story was going to be about a tiger, but I couldn't find anything to rhyme with that.

It is a tale of this wily little mouse who

invents an imaginary beast who lives in the deep dark wood.

He does that to fend off predators who have come to eat him.

Then he encounters the monster for real.

It actually exists in the deep dark wood. When you came to

write it you got stuck and you were persuaded to continue by a child by yes by my

son Alistair that's right I mean at this stage you have to remember I had had a few books published but most of them were for educational

publishers which it does count of course it does kind of Irish times have another book out there in the bookshops.

And I got halfway through it and I did get stuck

and I was going to give up.

And I told my son Alistair about this.

...