The sillier the better is the rule with an Irish stage adaptation of Lauren Child's fairy tale about storybook wolves, writes Sheila Wayman.

With a "chimbley" here, a "schooliform" there and, of course, a "happy-ever- afterly", Lauren Child beautifully captures the slightly skewed speech of young children in her picture-book stories. But as author and illustrator, she brings both a writer's ear and an artist's eye to her exuberant work.

Whether it's the overheard snippets of conversation on the street, or the skirt which she just has to buy so she can dress a character in its fabric, she is always on the lookout for material.

"Generally I have an idea or something is said, a phrase, and then I start writing. I very rarely draw pictures to go with it. It's in my head anyway, I can visualise it. So I work out the story first and then I start illustrating," she says from her north London home.

She draws in pencil first and then scans that artwork into her computer, which "I use as a very expensive photocopier, or maybe a very cheap one". She also scans in fabrics and photos, and then prints them all out to cut up and use for the collages she assembles for each page of her picture-books. Varied typography to reflect the tone of the narrative adds to the quirkiness.

It was seeing a little girl on a train in Denmark, who kept asking her mum and dad questions, that inspired one of Child's best-known characters, the solemn-eyed, flaxen-haired Lola. "I wanted to find a story that would work for her," says Child.

First appearing in I Will Not Ever Never Eat a Tomato in 2000, four-year-old Lola and her patient big brother Charlie endeared themselves to children and adults alike as they confronted issues such as fussy eating and the first day at school. Their fame grew as they leapt from the pages of Child's books to the small screen in 2005. Now their creator is looking forward to having the siblings back to herself.

It is quite a relief, she says, to be wrapping up the third and, for at least the time being, final animated series of Charlie and Lola for CBeebies. The intensity of the television process has meant her other work has suffered, she explains. She has been closely involved, going in twice a week to the production company, Tiger Aspect, discussing storylines and design, approving and editing scripts.

"I have to say it has been a great experience, but it doesn't make me want to jump back in and do another," she says. "It's relentless. I care about it very much and these are characters I am going to continue writing about. I don't want them to ruin the characters."

There are nuances in Lola's character on TV which Child doesn't really like - "She comes across as a little more knowing." As created in her books, she says, "I see her as blankly asking questions". While she accepts that an extra edge was necessary for the 10-minute television episodes, she is adamant that Lola is not precocious, as one viewer writing in complained.

Child has no such worries over a new Irish stage adaptation of another of her books Beware of the Storybook Wolves. It's the story of Herb and how, when fairytale wolves come alive in his bedroom one night, he buys time by telling them "little boys are for pudding" and they must have starters first.

"The book stands as it is", so "it doesn't matter" what interpretation other people put on it, Child says. "It's nice to see what people do with it."

This carte blanche might come as a relief to playwright Tom Swift, who has converted the slim picture-book to an hour-long production for the children's cultural centre, the Ark, in Dublin.

"The thing with Lauren Child's work is that so much of the story is told through the pictures and not through the text, although the text is very witty, and quite advanced in places," says Swift, sitting in the green room of the Ark. While keeping faith with the original, he has fleshed out the characters, and expanded and altered the storyline. Even a reworking of the Amy Winehouse song, Rehab, makes its way in there.

"I love that process of adapting something. For a writer it is brilliant to have a story structure and characters set out, even if it is on a fairly small scale." Swift wanted to make the resourceful Herb a hero for his audience. "For the kids who will be watching it, Herb will be the character they will identify with. I wanted to give him a bit of beef and a bit of action at the end."

Although it is Swift's first work for children, he says "I didn't find it much of a stretch from the way I work normally". He enjoyed "not having to censor yourself and say 'no, that's too silly for the audience'. That's exactly what the audience want, the sillier the better."

He kept in mind that teachers and parents would be going to watch the show too, so "I was trying to throw in a few nuggets that would work on a few levels".

What does he want the young audience to get out of it? "I want them to enjoy the thrill of live performance, to have a real fun experience in the theatre." He says some theatre shows for children can be too educational rather than entertaining. "I want them to be surrounded by the performance, taken in by it and enthralled."

A former broadcast journalist, Swift has been writing plays for Performance Corporation since 2002, including an award-winning adaptation of Voltaire's Candide, and Dr Ledbetter's Experiment for the Kilkenny Arts Festival, which went on to the Edinburgh Fringe. The work he is proudest of so far is Drive-By, a drive-in theatre production about boy racers, first presented at the 2006 Cork Midsummer Festival, which the audience listened to on their car radios.

In the same way as Child is happy to see what Swift makes of her work, he looks forward to seeing what the director and actors do with his script. While of course he gives his "considered opinion" at the runthroughs, he says he can let go. (Just as well, as it could all become very personal - the director, Jo Mangan, is also his wife, and his brother Stephen Swift is in the cast.)

"Jo gives the actors so much freedom to add layers and layers on top of the basic structure," he says. "I hand over the script and they make it better."

Pitching the play at six-year-olds and upwards, Swift, who has no children, drew on his own memories. "Having to make that jump back, it is quite surprising how much you remember of being a child, what made you scared and what made you laugh. "I hope they're not too scared by this. I remember seeing Star Wars when I was six or seven and it scared the pants off me, but I loved it."

Considering Child's ability to view the trials of life through children's eyes, it's surprising to learn that she doesn't have any children of her own either. So how does she do it?

"I think it is how any writer gets into the minds of anybody, by using your imagination," she says. "We all have experience of being a child."

Growing up in Wiltshire, the middle daughter of three, her childhood was "normal, not idyllic, it had its ups and downs - enough good things to know what happiness is and enough bad things to know what being miserable is like".

She says her parents, both teachers, were not the most liberal, but she and her sisters were allowed to get on with things and had more freedom than many children today.

Of the absence of any adults in the Charlie and Lola stories, Child says: "I think it was a subconscious thing to do with Charlie Brown", a character in Charles Schulz's Peanuts cartoons which she loved as a child and in which grown-ups do not feature. "I wanted to reflect the time you spend with your siblings."

While Child seemed to burst into children's literature, with a prolific blast of engaging picture-books, and witty, wordier Clarice Bean novels for the older child, success was a long time coming. After art school, she drifted through various jobs, including a stint of painting dots for Damien Hirst and designing lampshades for her own business.

"For me, it took a very long time to be published," she says. But once that first book made it into print, "everything went relatively fast".

"I got an agent before the first book was published. That happened very quick, but they had a really hard job trying to sell it."

For five years, Clarice Bean, That's Me did the rounds, with Child being told that "you can't do this, you can't write that". Still she stuck to her belief that "this is the best thing I can do and I am not prepared to change it". And once that first Clarice Bean book was published in 1999, it was a hit.

"I always want to tell students who write to me that this is what it's like, you mustn't give up. By all means listen to other people's views," she adds, "but if you don't agree, don't compromise or you'll never be happy."

The secret, indeed, to a happy-ever- afterly ending.

Beware of the Storybook Wolves opens at the Ark tomorrow and runs until March 16th. www.ark.ie. Lauren Child's website is www.milkmonitor.com