The Gruffalo and Friends will be staged in the theatre of Balfron High School on Saturday at 3pm when Julia and her husband Malcolm will be acting out Julia's stories and singing her songs — with a lot of audience participation.

The public event is suitable for children from four to 10 and their families.

Among the audience will be a group of children from Belarus, the region worst hit by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, when a nuclear reactor exploded and people were exposed to radioactivity 90 times greater than the Hiroshima bomb.

Lifeline

There is no access to clean food in the area and it is currently estimated that it will take up to 400 years to rid Belarus of contamination.

The Chernobyl Children's Lifeline is a charity which raises money in order to bring groups of children from Belarus to the UK for respite care. It is estimated that a month in the UK eating uncontaminated food, breathing uncontaminated air, boosts their immune system to such an extent that it gives them an extra two years on their life expectancy.

Julia said: "I was approached by the charity, as a group of children are spending a month in Killearn, and money is needed to help pay for their air fares from Belarus.

"The children will be in the audience. They are mostly about 10 years old and may not have very good English, but our show is quite visual and also has several songs in it so I think they'll enjoy it.

"I decided to include a performance of one of my books called The Princess and the Wizard because it is based on a Russian traditional tale which they may know.

"It's about a princess who keeps disguising herself to try to escape from a wicked wizard who has captured her. I will act the princess and my husband Malcolm will be the wizard. He often gets cast as a baddie, such as the Gruffalo or a wicked Emperor, and he sometimes moans about this but I think he secretly enjoys it."

The show coincides with the publication of a new book by Julia, called Tyrannosaurus Drip. It's the story of a little vegetarian dinosaur who is accidentally brought up by a family of fierce T-Rexes who nickname him Drip because of his peaceful ways. But little Drip isn't as weedy as he looks — in fact, he turns out to be a bit of a hero!

Julia said: "I'm very excited about this book, partly because it's the first one I've written for ages which has a proper villain in it — the mean Tyrannosaurus dad.

"We had a launch in the London Natural History Museum in front of the giant brontosaurus, and acted out a scene from the book."

And who acted the the baddy? Malcolm, of course.
Tickets for The Grufallo and Friends are available from Carol Gibb on 01360 441 030. After the show, a selection of Julia's books will be on sale and she will be available to sign them.