This item: Liang and the Magic Paintbrush (Reading Rainbow Books) by Demi Paperback 8.99. One of these items ships sooner than the other. I really enjoy getting the children in the audience to help me act out the stories and sing the songs. Add all three to Cart Add all three to List. When IвЂ™m not writing I am often performing, at book festivals and in theatres. 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. We work separately вЂ“ heвЂ™s in London and IвЂ™m in Glasgow вЂ“ but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. My real breakthrough was The Gruffalo, again illustrated by Axel. This prompted me to unearth some plays IвЂ™d written for a school reading group, and since then IвЂ™ve had 20 plays published. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. One of my television songs, A Squash and a Squeeze, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. The busking led to a career in singing and songwriting, mainly for childrenвЂ™s television. I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom IвЂ™m now married.Д«efore Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country the best one was in Italian about pasta.

Mary and I were always creating imaginary characters and mimicking real ones, and I used to write shows and choreograph ballets for us. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him). More about Julia: вЂњI 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.

She was also the ChildrenвЂ™s Laureate 2011-2013. Best known for her collaborations with Axel Scheffler, each of these vivid rhyming stories is a triumph of imagination. Julia Donaldson is author of many of todayвЂ™s best-loved picture books including The Gruffalo and Stick Man.

The magic paintbrush