The Baddies: the wickedly funny picture book from the creators of Zog and Stick Man, now available in paperback!

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She wasn’t unhappy, she adds, just sensitive. “I just couldn’t understand other people, and even when I was about 10 I would always have one little cry every day.” One year her father gave her a poetry compilation, A Book of 1,000 Poems, and she decided to become a poet (she cites Shakesapeare as an influence and has recently written a story in iambic pentameter for the first time). I studied Drama and French at Bristol University, where I met Malcolm, a guitar-playing medic to whom I’m now married. She always replies to children’s letters. “And they haven’t changed over the decades. It’s always the usual mix of ‘Where do you get your ideas from?’ to ‘Why do you wear such funny shoes?’ I love it, because adults are probably dying to ask about my shoes but they just say, ‘Are you inspired by Tolkien?’” I feel that's part of my job," adds Scheffler. And, as fans of their work know, there's always a picture of a gruffalo hidden somewhere in each of their books.

What I like about Julia's text is the subtlety of her messaging," says Scheffler. The Baddies is about kindness, and how being good is better than being bad at the end of the day. But mostly, it's just supposed to be fun.Though, she admits, she's running out of creatures for Scheffler to draw. "I do think sometimes about gargoyles or a sphinx or something," she says. "It's getting harder and harder, actually." Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country; the best one was in Italian about pasta. Scheffler always likes to add little extras to the illustrations. "I don't mention a cat," Donaldson explains of The Baddies. "But there's a witch's cat with fangs... and a lovely bit where the cat is holding out the spell book for the witch to look at." It should be funny and they shouldn't be too scary," says Axel Scheffler of the three baddies. "They're really ridiculous."

The baddies have ended up as a troll, a ghost and a witch, as well as a little girl who isn’t frightened by them at all, and I mention to Donaldson that I think it’s clever how it rightly observes that children are rarely scared by what you expect (my own son, for example was for years inexplicably terrified by the owl in The Gruffalo). “Oh that’s so true. We did a show recently where a child was not fazed at all by the dragon but was so scared of the wind.” What does she think children are looking for in a memorable picture book? “You know, you can’t generalise about young children. I have nine grandchildren and they all have different tastes. But a satisfying ending that isn’t totally predictable is important. And the language.” I really enjoy writing verse, even though it can be fiendishly difficult. I used to memorise poems as a child and it means a lot to me when parents tell me their child can recite one of my books. It’s not difficult to see elements of Donaldson’s own story in her work. Born into a bohemian family in Hampstead, north London, she grew up in a home that she, her parents and sister shared with her grandmother, uncle and aunt. Her parents encouraged her and her sister “to absolutely be ourselves”, and Donaldson wrote musical versions of fairytales, which the four of them would perform for the extended family. To this day, she thinks of herself as a “performer-author”, and she and Malcolm frequently put on shows of her books; at the time of our interview, they are preparing for a performance at the Edinburgh festival. I ask Scheffler if his and his German-French family’s lives have changed much in Britain since Brexit. “Not so much on a day-to-day basis, but I look at the quality of politicians in this country and it’s incredible. In Germany, it would be unthinkable to have such incompetent, cynical and corrupt people in government. Sorry, I’m getting political,” he says.

The ghost tries to scare the little girl in her bedroom — she offers him a warm bath and a cup of tea.