The Baddies: the wickedly funny picture book from the creators of Zog and Stick Man, now available in paperback!

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Frog and Toad, George and Martha, Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat: iconic duos abound in children's literature. Another classic pair? Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Though, she admits, she's running out of creatures for Scheffler to draw. "I do think sometimes about gargoyles or a sphinx or something," she says. "It's getting harder and harder, actually." Donaldson occasionally — but not always — writes in verse. "I was a songwriter," she says. "So I've written... I don't know, 200 songs before I'd ever written a single book." It comes naturally — but she says the verse has to have a structure. In The Baddies, it comes from the same phrase, repeated throughout the story. For his part, Scheffler says he prefers to draw fairy tale stories and fantastical creatures. "I find it easier to illustrate a story like that," he says. "I don't think I'm very good at observing the everyday, modern life." A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood / The mouse saw the nut and the nut looked good,” Donaldson begins. The temperature outside is a furnace, but watching Donaldson perform her own classic, it’s impossible not to shiver with joy.

Why? It’s because she gets to marry her husband Malcolm all over again. She plays Betty O’Barley (“I give her an Irish accent”) and he plays Harry O’Hay, the scarecrow whose love is threatened by the arrival of the dastardly Reginald Drake. “I like it because it’s got that Hollywood love triangle.” I also continued to write “grown-up” songs and perform them in folk clubs and on the radio, and have recently released two CDs of these songs. Malcolm, whom she mentions frequently, is the only person with whom she shares early ideas and drafts, discussing things while walking near their home in West Sussex, and showing him “half-baked manuscripts”.

Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler started working together more than 30 years ago, on A Squash and a Squeeze. Donaldson had written the story as a song when she was in her 20s — years later she got a call from a publisher who wanted to turn the song into a children's book. She was paired up with Scheffler for the illustrations. Their second book together was The Gruffalo. When a little girl moves into a nearby cottage, the Baddies can’t wait to scare her out of her wits. The baddies have ended up as a troll, a ghost and a witch, as well as a little girl who isn’t frightened by them at all, and I mention to Donaldson that I think it’s clever how it rightly observes that children are rarely scared by what you expect (my own son, for example was for years inexplicably terrified by the owl in The Gruffalo). “Oh that’s so true. We did a show recently where a child was not fazed at all by the dragon but was so scared of the wind.” What does she think children are looking for in a memorable picture book? “You know, you can’t generalise about young children. I have nine grandchildren and they all have different tastes. But a satisfying ending that isn’t totally predictable is important. And the language.”

One of my television songs, A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE, was made into a book in 1993, with illustrations by the wonderful Axel Scheffler. It was great to hold the book in my hand without it vanishing in the air the way the songs did. This prompted me to unearth some plays I’d written for a school reading group, and since then I’ve had 20 plays published. Most children love acting and it’s a tremendous way to improve their reading. I ask Scheffler if his and his German-French family’s lives have changed much in Britain since Brexit. “Not so much on a day-to-day basis, but I look at the quality of politicians in this country and it’s incredible. In Germany, it would be unthinkable to have such incompetent, cynical and corrupt people in government. Sorry, I’m getting political,” he says. I’m not expecting Donaldson to answer the same question herself – after all, isn’t that a bit like choosing a favourite child? – but she does. She particularly loves performing The Scarecrow’s Wedding, she says, as she speaks to me from the green room at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, during her stint performing a sell-out run of shows based on her books. The Smeds and the Smoos wasn’t about Brexit, it was just Romeo and Juliet with a happy ending,” Donaldson insists. “I never start a book thinking, ‘I want to teach the world to stop being at war.’” I feel that's part of my job," adds Scheffler. And, as fans of their work know, there's always a picture of a gruffalo hidden somewhere in each of their books.We have sailed past our allotted time by now but I have one last question from my three-year-old: why, at the end of A Squash and a Squeeze, does the pig look angry but the other animals don’t? After studying drama and French at university, she busked around Europe, joined by a fellow performing enthusiast, who was, of course, Malcolm. I ask if their busking days inspired Donaldson and Scheffler’s book, Tabby McTat, about a busking cat and his shabby human, Fred. “Julia’s sister says Fred is who I’d be if I hadn’t met Julia, which I deeply resent,” Malcolm chortles. He is certainly as devoted as Fred: when Donaldson can’t remember quite when she finished writing The Baddies, Malcolm consults his diary and gives her precise start and finishing dates. One thing Donaldson and Scheffler understand after all these years is that kids like to be scared — just not too much.

When a little girl moves into a nearby cottage, the three baddies are practically giddy. They decide to compete to see who can steal the little girl's blue hanky. No, no!” cries Donaldson, while Scheffler says simultaneously “Oh that’s a good idea!” He then ponders how he might have pulled that off, Donaldson’s objections notwithstanding: “I should have drawn one of the baddies with that [Boris Johnson] hair.”

About Julia Donaldson

What I like about Julia's text is the subtlety of her messaging," says Scheffler. The Baddies is about kindness, and how being good is better than being bad at the end of the day. But mostly, it's just supposed to be fun. The ghost tries to scare the little girl in her bedroom — she offers him a warm bath and a cup of tea.

Donaldson has in the past talked about her concerns for today’s children, from them having to wear masks in school to the effects of social media. So I persist with my theory that perhaps The Baddies is a parable about how much resilience modern kids need to deal with the world – and she persists in batting it away: “No, no, no,” she says firmly. They are the brains behind dozens of picture books including Room on the Broom, Tabby McTat and, of course, The Gruffalo. One of their latest books together is The Baddies — about a witch, a troll and a ghost who like being bad. Before 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. The spark happens when when when the pictures come together with the text in the book," explains Scheffler. "We're very different people and it's amazing that it works so well."In The Baddies, the witch, the troll and the ghost come a cropper when a little girl refuses to be scared by them. Although it’s never mentioned in the story, she is of south Asian heritage. Is this the first time they’ve featured a non-caucasian main character?