The Bermuda Festival will be serving up something extra special for the kids this year — Witch & Chips with some Gruffalo tea to wash it all down.

Julia Donaldson, the author of hundreds of best-selling children’s books including “The Gruffalo”, “Room on The Broom” and “Princess Mirror-Belle”, among others, will be performing some of her stories, songs and skits later this month during the Bermuda Festival.

Unfortunately, The Gruffalo & Friends on at City Hall, from January 19 to 21, is already sold out.

The Bookworm Beat recently spoke with Mrs. Donaldson at her home in Edinburgh, Scotland in a telephone interview.

“Quite a lot of my books have been adapted for the stage,” Mrs. Donaldson said, “but it isn’t always easy to make the transition. It depends on the books. Some of them have you tearing your hair out. It might have a cast of thousands. With ‘Room on the Broom’, we spent ages trying to figure it out. In the book, different animals form a mud-covered pyramid to scare off a dragon. You can struggle and then suddenly, you figure out how to do it. It is fun, and it is a creative challenge. I really enjoy that.”

Mrs. Donaldson’s husband Malcolm will be performing various predators in the stories. The couple often use different mediums to tell a story on stage including songs, and sometimes a puppet show.

“I won’t be doing a puppet show in Bermuda,” Mrs. Donaldson said. “We are on the first lap on a trip around the world, and we are limited in what we carry in the way of props.”

Her story telling career began on a Paris street corner, during a trip to Europe a student.

“Before Malcolm and I had our three sons we used to go busking together and I would write special songs for each country we visited; the best one was in Italian about pasta,” Mrs. Donaldson said.

Busking is singing, playing an instrument or performing in a public place for money.

Mrs. Donaldson’s ability to write a song about absolutely anything led to a songwriting career for BBC television where she would write songs about anything from window cleaning, to throwing crumpled paper into a trash tin.

One of her television songs, “A Squash and a Squeeze”, was made into a children’s book by the same name in 1993. Since then she has written hundreds of books, many of them illustrated by Axel Scheffler. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages and the movie rights to one of her more recent books, “The Giant and the Jones”, (for ages seven to 11) was recently purchased by Heyday Films, the same people who produced the Harry Potter movies.

“The way our world tour came about was that we planned to go to New Zealand,” said Mrs. Donaldson. “Then we were invited to the Bermuda Festival which was in the wrong direction. Someone pointed out that we could get to New Zealand going the other way. Malcolm is a children’s doctor. He is taking a sabbatical year, which is a long cherished dream. The world trip is halfway through that. Chile seemed like on route. Chile will be a holiday. In New Zealand, the publisher will work us hard in Australia and Asia. We will be going to Nepal and China, among other places.”

They will be performing one of their stories, “The Magic Paintbrush”, in China. Mrs. Donaldson said this would be an interesting experience, because “The Magic Paintbrush” was based on a traditional Chinese story.

“I am wondering how it will go down in China,” she said. “We have only performed it in Britain before. When we are in China, we are going to be performing partly to people who have the English version. We are also going to meet up with our Chinese publishers.”

Mrs. Donaldson said she is amazed at the success of some of her books, particularly “The Gruffalo”.

“That is the power of the published word,” she said. “You are sitting there in your little room with your little notebook, and then a few years go by and you get letters from all over the world, and pictures of plays of your stories put on by people in Africa. It is marvellous then.”

One thing that has become close to the heart of Mrs. Donaldson is the phonics system of learning to read. She was recently invited to write early reading books for the Songbird Reading series using the phonics system.

“I use to go into my children’s school and help with the reading,” she said. “My aunt Mary Hopkins lives in Bermuda. She was a head teacher at Saltus Grammar School in the junior department.

“She was always very interested in dyslexic children. We use to talk about different ways of learning to read and how there are different ways. I taught my own sister to read when we were little. I was six and she was four.”

The Songbird Series is part of the Oxford Reading Tree scheme. They were released recently and appear to be doing well.

Mrs. Donaldson said on her website, “Combining phonics with fun was an enormous challenge of my favourite kind. Almost every word in every book had to be phonically decodable, and yet I wanted to write real stories which children would enjoy reading. In the very first book, “Top Cat”, I could only use two short vowels and six consonants.

“Often the ideas for stories would spring from the sounds themselves: 15 queens having a feast, or a mum moaning “Don’t mix soap with jam and coal”. I think my favourite characters are Spike who says he can dive, drive and feed wild lions, and a kleptomaniac kangaroo called Sue who comes to school and steals the glue and spoons.”

<\h>For more information about Julia Donaldson go to www.juliadonaldson.co.uk/