Julia Donaldson – Children’s Laureate
Julia Donaldson, author of Room on the Broom, The Gruffalo and many more fantastic children’s books has been the Children’s Laureate since 2011.
The role of Laureate is awarded once every two years to an eminent writer or illustrator of children’s books to celebrate outstanding achievement in their field.
On talking about her plans for the role Julia wrote that: ‘Each Laureate brings something new to the job… I bring a love for music and drama and want to devote some time to that… Through my work with children in schools, I have encouraged them to act out stories and plays, and I have seen the positive results of active audience participation… Generally children love acting and performing and it’s great for their confidence. It also brings another dimension to books.’ The Sun, 8th June 2011
However like her predecessors, Julia is also keen to simply inspire children to enjoy books and to love reading for pleasure, ‘…while it is important to read, it should be enjoyable, it should be done for pleasure.’ Independent, 8th June 2011
As part of her work as the Children’s Laureate Julia embarked on a library tour of the UK visiting 35 libraries across England, Wales and Scotland in September and October 2012.
Schoolchildren from selected local schools attended the events, which saw Julia bringing some of her hugely popular stories to life through special dramatisations. The children also showed off their own acting and singing skills during their own short performances inspired by children’s literature. To coincide with the libraries tour, Julia launched a website for teachers to help them to use drama and performance to bring picture books to life in the classroom.
We were delighted to be able to join Julia on her tour when she visited a library in Eastbourne. In particular this library had an underground theatre so it was lucky we had our cameras with us! You can see the performance on the Room on the Broom DVD out now.
