Although the besotted Watsons assume Mercy is trotting off to seek help, the only search and rescue Mercy seems to care about involves butter and hot bread. When Mercy sneaks into her owner’s bed one night, her added heft causes the bed to fall partway through the ceiling. Mercy is the beloved pet pig of the doting Mr. Hilarity and hijinks abound in this tale about a voracious swine with an overweening yen for hot buttered toast. Off hustles the snail, to spur a nearby community to action with another slimy message: “ SAVE THE WHALE.” Donaldson’s rhyme, though not cumulative, sounds like “The house that Jack built”-“This is the tide coming into the bay, / And these are the villagers shouting, ‘HOORAY!’ / As the whale and the snail travel safely away.” Looking in turn hopeful, delighted, anxious, awed, and determined, Scheffler’s snail, though tiny next to her gargantuan companion, steals the show in each picturesque seascape-and upon returning home, provides so enticing an account of her adventures that her fellow mollusks all climb on board the whale’s tail for a repeat voyage. Responding to a plaintive “ Ride wanted around the world,” scrawled in slime on a coastal rock, whale picks up snail, then sails off to visit waters tropical and polar, stormy and serene before inadvertently beaching himself. Born in Hamburg, Axel now lives with his family in London.Like an ocean-going “Lion and the Mouse,” a humpback whale and a snail “with an itchy foot” help each other out in this cheery travelogue.

He also illustrates the popular Pip and Posy series. In addition to his picture books, Axel is the illustrator of wonderful novelty and gift books for Macmillan, such as the bestselling The Bedtime Bear, The Tickle Book and Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. Axel Scheffler is a star illustrator whose instantly recognisable, warm and witty illustrations have achieved worldwide acclaim and numerous awards. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh. Julia also writes fiction as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live children's shows are always in demand. Her books include Room on the Broom, What the Ladybird Heard and the modern classic The Gruffalo, which has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide and has been translated into over sixty languages. Julia Donaldson is the outrageously talented, prize-winning author of the world's best-loved picture books, and was the 2011-2013 UK Children's Laureate.

Snail and the whale illustrations