If you’re looking for books to buy for infants and toddlers, chances are you would have stumbled upon one name somewhere around the top of the list.. Julia Donaldson, the English born playwright and author.
Her sing-song rhyming stories come with beautiful illustrations. They are great for read aloud story time, and simple enough to become companions for early readers too. Our journey with Julia Donaldson started around the time baby was a year and a half, and the collection grew quite quickly from then on! But as we soon discovered, not all JDs are equal. So here’s our list, in order of preference of the books we’ve read, loved, and re-read (or not!)
Our first foray into Julia’s world, stays our favourite to date! The story is of a clumsy witch who keeps dropping things off her Broom, and picking up companions along the way. Until a big bad dragon comes and threatens to eat her! The rhymes on this book are almost sing-song in nature, and we’ve now read it so often that we can (and actually did) recite the whole story in the car to pass time!
We make up our own versions of the song too.. “Is there room on the Broom for a Mumma like me?.. Yes said the baby and Mumma climbed on”
Good for ages 12m and up
A sweet little story of a baby monkey who can’t seem to explain what is Mumma looks like to a helpful butterfly. Babies especially love this one as they too join in to announce – No! That’s not his Mumma!
The illustrations are lovely in his book (we have the paperback but it also comes in boardbook format). We enjoy pointing out other creatures in the book too, even though they aren’t part of the story.
It’s also called “Where’s My Mom?” in some versions.
Good for ages 9m and above
The lucky cave baby, who isn’t so lucky after all!
He’s taken away by a mammoth who might just feed him to a big brown bear (spoiler alert: he doesn’t!). This book sees Julia Donaldson’s trademark story telling combined with Emily Travis’s imaginative illustrations. It is suitable for slightly older toddlers as the concepts in it can be a little tough for infants to grasp. I loved the fact that it brings words like lurking, crackle and squiggles into our daily vocabulary.
Who doesn’t like learning with fun!
Good for ages 2yrs and up
Oh, you can’t know about Julia Donaldson without knowing this scary (lovable?) creature called the Gruffalo! Knobbly knees and terrible tusks were shown off to everyone who would listen for many weeks after we first read Gruffalo. It’s a lovely story, wrapped with doses of humour, a colourfully vast vocabulary, and of course creatures of the forest who make things interesting for sure. The book was inspired by a Chinese story about a girl and a tiger. It is Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler’s most successful collaboration till date with more than 10 million copies sold worldwide.
The Gruffalo’s Child, like most sequels, sounded to me like a ride-the-success attempt. But when you read it you realise that it is a good tale by itself. The bored little child is out to seek adventures, and ends up scared when she does find it!
The two books can be read independent of each other, or can make a good starter set for early readers.
Good for ages 12m and up
My dino loving child, wasn’t too impressed with this tale initially. It’s a slightly
complicated story line, and has some mature images (bones, and fights between carnivores and herbivores). I reckon it is best suited for older pre-schoolers.
Be warned though, a friend’s daughter decided she wants to turn vegetarian after hearing this story.
Good for ages 3yrs plus
A sweet little story, with some very interesting expressions by its animal protagonists. But it’s a one time read.
More like a little parable about being happy with what you have rather that being greedy all the time. For children’s books, I need something that’s a little longer lasting, and not to mention more imaginative.
Good for ages 9m and up
Another collaboration between Julia and Axel, but it just doesn’t work for me.
The story feels so forced. It’s about a snail and a whale, and quite obviously has most sentences in perfect rhyme, but there isn’t much else. The illustrations too seemed recycled with some characters from other books popping up here and there. A good part of our reading time in fact is spent explaining why the whale’s tale is disconnected from his body!
This one stays at the back of our bookshelf and I wouldn’t add it to the essential JD list for sure.
Which are your favourite (and not so hot) Julia Donaldson books for toddlers? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.
And if you haven’t yet gotten around to reading any of these then head to your nearest books store, or search on Amazon to pick up a few today! When starting with a younger child (less than 18m), try to get the board books which are safe from page tearing, albeit a little more expensive. Older kids can enjoy the paperback with larger illustrations and easier lettering for self-readers.
All images sourced from Goodreads.com
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