Anticipation Builds for Room on the Broom
As Christmas day approaches excitement is building in the press for Room on the Broom.
From the Times (printed below for non-subscribers)
Balancing act: A ride to remember in Room on the Broom
Alex O’Connell
Julia Donaldson’s story Room on the Broom is set to join The Gruffalo as an animated classic
When pastmongers complain that no one can recite poetry anymore, I cite Julia Donaldson. For the Children’s Laureate and saviour of the bedtime hour is the poetry world’s equivalent of the writer of the pop song that sticks in your head all day. Only Donaldson’s poems refuse to irritate and they last a lifetime.
Most adults who have raised small children in the past two decades will be able to close their eyes and trill the complete words to at least one of her books — A Squash and a Squeeze (20 years old next year), Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book (her most postmodern work!), The Snail and the Whale (the author’s favourite) and, of course, The Gruffalo (her most successful).
In a market groaning with titles about undemanding, personality-free talking animals, she is a fresh breeze with her clever scans, honest messages and nods to the parents. That’s before you mention Axel Scheffler’s wonderful illustrations — the two are tied together forever like A. A.Milne and E. H. Shephard.
Now she has extended her reach beyond the bedside table to the TV cabinet. This is not entirely new. For the past two years we have had 30-minute cartoon films of The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child at Christmas, courtesy of the BBC. This year BBC One will show an adaptation of Room on the Broom about a kind-spirited witch who keeps losing her belongings (a hat, “the bow from her long ginger plait”) and acquiring friends (a cat, a bird, a frog, etc) as she flies about on her broomstick. Finally the broom “cracks in two”, such is the weight of her generous heart — but, no fear, it resurrects, bigger and better.
The book is most successful in the States and was No 1 in the bestseller charts over Hallowe’en. “It’s big business there. On the Gruffalo books they say, ‘By the author of Room on the Broom’,” Donaldson says.
The film, produced by Martin Pope and Michael Rose of Magic Light Pictures, is true to the story. Donaldson is sobeloved that getting stars in for the voiceovers was a cinch: Simon Pegg narrates, Gillian Anderson is the witch, Rob Brydon the Cat, Martin Clunes the Dog, Sally Hawkins the Bird, David Walliams the Frog, and Timothy Spall the Dragon. “Room on the Broom is a gentler story and it’s nice to get out of that dark wood!” says Donaldson, referring to The Gruffalo’s sunless setting.
It’s hard not to write in children’s book clichés when describing Donaldson, who, yes, has twinkly eyes, peppercorn hair and the kind of soft face and unshowy intelligence of a fictional grandmother. She is down in London from Glasgow, where she has lived for 20 years with her husband Malcolm, a medical consultant who plays the guitar. She keeps a tight grip on her work. “They wanted to do a Room on the Broom series — but they are just poems, it would have been silly,” she says, with self-deprecating certainty. The changes in the TV version were minimal.
It seems fitting that Donaldson grew up in a house straight out of a Dodie Smith novel — a Victorian terrace in Hampstead, which she shared with her parents, grandmother, aunt, uncle, younger sister Mary and cat Geoffrey (“who was really a prince in disguise”).
She and Mary would create imaginary characters and Donaldson used to write shows and choreograph ballets for them. A wind-up gramophone wafted out Chopin. “Granny lived on the top floor and had a TV but we didn’t get one until my early teens.” Her childhood TV tastes have infected the adaptation. “I loved the commercials. A cartoon is more magical than 3-D — I didn’t like The Woodentops.”
It’s her understanding of children that got her the Laureate gig, which expires in six months. During the past 18, she has campaigned for libraries and written plays for schools, who have also acted out Room on the Broom. And for the children next Christmas? “Stick Man [her book about a daddy stick’s pre-Christmas trials] would be the obvious one to do,” she says. A year is a long time in parenthood.
Room on the Broom, Christmas Day, BBC One, 4.35pm; the book is published by Macmillan at £6.99
