I Wish I’d Written: Tony Mitton

Tony Mitton on a picture book with good verse and a strong plot…

What a brilliant picture book this is. Axel Scheffler’s bold line and strong colouring are perfect for this kind of make-believe story. The pairing with Julia Donaldson’s text is an inspiration, and the varied layout of word and picture on the page is well paced.

The story itself has classic features in its construction and development. Victim becomes victor, eaten becomes potential (but not actual) eater. And all with quiet, assured humour. Three times a plot device is repeated, while varied, along with neat little knots of refrain. To cap this there’s the added delight of a made-up monster becoming real. The mouse has to manage its own scary invention by wit and quick thinking, the same qualities that created it in the first place.

Julia clearly knows that verse is not just a matter of making rhymes. While her rhymes are neat and well chosen, she also attends carefully to the management of rhythm. It’s one thing to write good verse, quite another to create strong plot. But she does that too. Combine those skills with Axel’s illustrations and you have a superb and delightful picture book. And you can see them playing similar duets in Monkey Puzzle, Room on the Broom and The Snail and the Whale. Don’t they do it well?

The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, is published by Macmillan (0 333 71092 4, £10.99 hbk, 0 333 71093 2, £5.99 pbk). Tony Mitton’s latest book is Spookyrumpus (Orchard, 1 84362 422 2, £10.99 hbk).

Photo of Tony Mitton, courtesy of Orchard Books.