Julia Donaldson

There's an article in today's Guardian about Julia Donaldson. Best known for her Gruffalo picture books, she has now written her first book for older children. Running on the Cracks, for age 11+, is published on Monday by Egmont at £6.99. It's also on order for the Library. In it, the protagonist, a runaway, stumbles into the world of the mentally ill. It is a world Julia knows intimately. She navigated through it with increasing desperation for more than a decade with her husband, Malcolm, as they tried to help Hamish, their eldest son. This book is dedicated to his memory, and the article describes how the family has tried to cope with his eventual suicide.