The Highway Rat

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After the war, they were reunited and married, and in 1950 they bought the Hampstead house together with Jerry's mother, his sister Beta and her husband Chris (the two men had met in the P.O.W. camp). When Donaldson was six her father contracted polio and thereafter was confined to a wheelchair, though he still led an active life, working as a lecturer in the Maudsley Hospital's Institute of Psychiatry, where he pioneered genetic studies using the model of identical twins brought up apart.

The Art of Giving: An Interview with award-winning illustrator Axel Scheffler". ArtLink Central. 12 April 2017 . Retrieved 18 December 2017. Donaldson was born and brought up in Hampstead, London, with her younger sister Mary. [4] The family occupied a Victorian three-storey house near Hampstead Heath. Her parents, sister and their pet cat Geoffrey lived on the ground floor, an aunt and uncle (and later their children, James and Kate) on the first floor and her grandmother on the second floor. In 1989 Malcolm was appointed to Glasgow University as senior lecturer in child health and the family, now five following the arrival of Jerry in 1987, moved to Bearsden. Both Julia and Axel enjoy international renown for their work. Julia was the UK Children’s Laureate 2011-13 and honoured with an MBE for services to Literature. Axel’s artwork is exhibited internationally; he has illustrated for many charities, and designed the Royal Mail Christmas stamps in 2012.Donaldson has also written a phonic reading scheme of short stories comprising 60 books of Songbird Phonics, published by Oxford University Press. [7] Donaldson has also performed jointly with her illustrators, particularly Axel Scheffler and Lydia Monks. She has performed the Donaldson/Scheffler books not only in English but also in German on several tours and at the Berlin Festival. In 2007, when Malcolm took a sabbatical from his job, he joined Julia on a World Tour, acting and singing in Bermuda, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and America. Imagine that one of the animals in the story is being interviewed by the police. What would they tell the police about their encounter with the Highway Rat? The Highway Rat is described as a ‘baddie’ and a ‘beast’. Can you think of any other words that might be used to describe him?

The Highway Rat’s manners were ‘rough and rude’. Can you make a list of good manners to help the Highway Rat be nicer to others? 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. You get a sense (or at least I did) whilst reading the book that it’s a very ‘active’ story. By that I don’t just mean its plot is full of cause and effect, but also that it lends itself to being acted out. This is a fun story that you can use to celebrate and promote reading. Using some of your class as a chorus, a few children as the lead characters and after having made character masks and props in class, The Highway Rat would make a perfect assembly piece. A typical public event consists of acting out (more or less word-for-word) four stories, and singing three or four songs (mostly from Donaldson's three albums of songs – The Gruffalo Song and Other Songs, Room on the Broom and Other Songs and The Gruffalo's Child and Other Songs). There is always a strong element of audience participation, with children (and sometimes their parents) invited on stage to act parts in the stories. Malcolm Donaldson almost always takes part in the events, and they are also often joined by other performers including family members.The Gruffalo author Julia Donaldson moved to Steyning and she is still enjoying a "honeymoon period" in the smallest town she has ever lived in". The Argus. 7 May 2016 . Retrieved 18 January 2019. Once in Glasgow, Donaldson 'pitched' once again for song-writing commissions with the BBC. Between 1990 and 1994 she wrote for various programmes including Thinkabout Science (two series) and Playdays, composing songs for presenters and puppets (such as Lizzie and the Whybird) to sing. a b Franklin-Wallis, Oliver (17 December 2020). "How Julia Donaldson conquered the world". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2020. This seemingly teaches him a lesson, and, thinner, greyer and meeker, the Rat lands a job in a shop ... what kind of shop is for you to guess, but believe me it is probably an easy guess! I 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. Mary and I would argue about which of us would marry him).

Donaldson's parents, James (always known as Jerry) and Elizabeth, met shortly before the Second World War, which then separated them for six years. Jerry, who had studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Oxford University, spent most of the war in a prisoner-of-war camp where his knowledge of German earned him the position of an interpreter. Elizabeth, also a good German speaker with a degree in languages, meanwhile did war work in the WRNS. In her 30s, she was diagnosed with “cookie-bite” hearing loss, which leaves a bite-shaped hole in the mid-range of the audible spectrum, making it difficult for her to hear some speech and music, and she is helped by lip reading. [9] From the 1990s when Donaldson was extensively visiting school and libraries, she extended techniques learned in Bristol and Brighton to encourage children to act and sing with her. Following the publication of The Gruffalo she was invited to book festivals, participating in the Edinburgh International Book Festival every year from 1999 onwards, and appearing regularly at Hay, Cheltenham and Bath festivals, as well as at many theatres.

Multibuys

In 1983 the family of four moved to Bristol where Malcolm Donaldson was appointed as Senior Registrar in Paediatrics to United Bristol Hospitals. By then the television writing had dried up and the folk scene had waned. Julia Donaldson wrote and sang a few topical songs for adult radio programmes (including one about the Guinness Distillers take-over bid, which appeared on Financial World Tonight), did occasional amateur acting and street theatre, and wrote the songs for the Kingsdown community play Nine Trees Shade. She also became a volunteer in Hamish's primary school, hearing the children read aloud. She devised short plays with the right number of parts for a reading group, rotating the roles until each child had read the whole play. The piece would then be performed to the entire class. This approach seemed to build confidence in reading aloud as well as being enjoyable, and Donaldson stored the plays in a drawer for possible future use. Donaldson studied Drama and French at Bristol University (1967–1970), graduating with a 2:1 honours degree. During her time there she acted in departmental productions and learnt the guitar. In 1968, she and her friend Maureen Purkis took part in the play I am not the Eiffel Tower with music composed by Colin Sell, an accomplished young pianist who was studying Spanish and Portuguese at Bristol and who has gone on to appear in BBC Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Sell's roommate Malcolm Donaldson, a medical student who played left-handed guitar and was a keen amateur actor, came to see the show and subsequently teamed up with Sell, Donaldson and Purkis to sing in the pubs during Bristol University Rag Week in early 1969. Almost immediately after this Donaldson and Purkis were seconded to live in Paris for six months as part of their degree course where they sang and played their guitars to café audiences for money. Malcolm joined them in the summer and the trio performed various songs by the Beatles and from musicals including Hair. a b "Entertainment stars in New Year Honours". BBC News. 28 December 2018 . Retrieved 29 December 2018. Find sources: "Julia Donaldson"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( March 2019) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message)

The Highway Rat is our new book for our Literacy lessons in Year 1. They have all really engaged with the story and the characters. It has provided us with many different discussion points - one child pointed out to me today that the Highway Rat is naughty not only because he steals people's food, but also because he talks to strangers! This gave us the opportunity to have a little PSHE talk about 'stranger danger', and why the Highway Rat has not been making good choices! Funnily enough, I find it harder to write not in verse, though I feel I am now getting the hang of it! 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. I have just finished writing a novel for teenagers.Donaldson composed two musicals for children: King Grunt's Cake (1976) and Pirate on the Pier (1980) which she and a small cast performed both in London and Brighton. Influenced by their Bristol Street Theatre experience, Donaldson ran a Saturday-morning workshop for children in Portslade from 1974 to 1976. During these sessions a simple play would be devised, followed by making of props and costumes, rehearsal and then a performance. Walsh, John (3 October 2015). "Julia Donaldson interview: The Gruffalo author on how Judi Dench and busking helped her career". The Independent . Retrieved 12 April 2020. The Highway Rat gets fat from eating everyone else’s dinner. Can you think of a healthy diet to help him keep fit? Rix, Juliet (28 February 2009). "Living without Hamish: how a family copes with suicide". The Guardian. Julia Donaldson divides her time between Scotland and West Sussex where she lives with her husband. Axel is from Hamburg, and has lived in the UK since 1984. He lives in London with his family but travels extensively.