The Paper Dolls by Julia Donaldson / Kids' Corner

This recording was produced by Storyvision Studios UK and is available HERE.

Image Description: Book cover - "The front cover of The Paper Dolls. An off-white background with red text for the title and blue text for the author's name in the upper third of the page. The bottom two thirds has a childlike drawing of a little girl with a red sweater, pink cheeks, and brown hair holding playful paper dolls over her head.

Book Description:

A string of paper dolls go on a fantastical adventure through the house and out into the garden. They soon escape the clutches of the toy dinosaur and the snapping jaws of the oven-glove crocodile, but then a very real pair of scissors threatens…

About the Author

I grew up in London, in a tall Victorian terraced house. My granny lived at the top and my uncle and aunt were on the middle floor. My parents, younger sister Mary and I shared the ground floor with our cat Geoffrey. (He was really a prince in disguise. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him.)

Granny used to slit open big brown envelopes so that Mary and I could draw and write stories on the back of them. I liked writing stories at school too; the first one I remember writing was about a rabbit with orange ears that looked like carrots. Mary and I never had any rabbits when we were growing up but we did have other cats (and lots of kittens!) and quite a few guinea pigs.

After I’d finished school I went to Bristol University to study Drama and French. There I met Malcolm, a medical student who played the guitar. In our holidays we often used to go busking together. We would sing outside cafés and collect money in a big hat. I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta.

Before we had our three sons I worked for a couple of publishers and at a local radio station, and then taught English in a secondary school. During this time I was also singing in folk clubs with Malcolm. I sent a tape of my songs to the BBC, and they asked me to write some more songs for children’s television. They usually told me what to write about – it might be guinea pigs, window-cleaning or horrible smells! In 1993 the words of one of my television songs, A Squash and a Squeeze, were made into a book, with wonderful pictures by Axel Scheffler.

Having my first book published encouraged me to look out some plays I’d written for our son’s primary school and send them to an educational publisher. Since then I’ve had 46 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. My real breakthrough was in 1999 with a book called The Gruffalo, again illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Axel and I have now done over twenty books together and been on quite a few book tours.

This bio is from Julia Donaldson's website. You can read the full bio HERE.