Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler – the John Lennon and Paul McCartney of children’s publishing – are sitting in Donaldson’s garden in West Sussex on one of the hottest days of the year, gazing into her fish pond. “There’s Swampy,” smiles Donaldson, pointing to a fat fish flapping past. “And that one’s John.” Scheffler, as solemn as Donaldson is sunny, makes the brief nod of one who has heard about the fish many times before, but is still quietly amused by them.
Ever since their first book together, A Squash and a Squeeze, was published in 1993, the two have been explaining to their millions upon millions of readers that they don’t actually work alongside each other: she writes the books in Sussex, he then does the illustrations from his home in Richmond, London. Yet they have an easy companionability. He admires how her garden has grown since the start of Covid, she joshes him about him being “too busy” to make the forthcoming celebrations for her and her husband Malcolm’s 50th wedding anniversary. “Well, the holiday was booked … ” Scheffler murmurs apologetically.
