A castle stands under a blue sky with light fluffy clouds. The grounds surrounding the castle are fields of bright green grass and trees surrounded by a dense forest. My real breakthrough was THE GRUFFALO, again illustrated by Axel. We work separately - he’s in London and I’m in Glasgow - but he sends me letters with lovely funny pictures on the envelopes. Zog flies awkwardly as he tries to land. He crashes into Gadabout, who examines a grey goat with a stethoscope.

The dragon dives down toward a clearing in a forest. Several animals, a deer, a fox, a squirrel and three rabbits gaze up.Gadabout bows. He wears a white coat over a yellow shirt and a puffy green hat with yellow stripes. Gadabout gently cuts one of the unicorn’s horns off with his sword. The horn and branch fall to the ground. Gadabout and Zog run through a courtyard with guards chasing them. Several guards stand in their path in front of a statue of a dragon. Gadabout and Zog are surrounded by guards. 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. The king, who is Pearl’s uncle, stands inside the castle posing heroically as an artist carves another statue.

The girl rides through the sky on a plump orange flying dragon. A young man dressed as a court squire rides behind her on the dragonZog flies over the ocean and through a forest. He flies past a mountain at night, then flies clumsily through clouds.

The king stands on a balcony feeding a cookie to a dove. He notices Pearl giggling in the distance. 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).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.