The cover of The Gruffalo

The Gruffalo is a successful children's book, written by Scottish writer Julia Donaldson and illustrated by German Axel Scheffler. The book has sold over a million copies, has won several prizes for children's literature, and has been made into a Broadway play.

The Gruffalo was initially published in 1999 in the UK by Macmillan Children's Books (ISBN 0333710932). Printed initially in a 32 page boardbook edition, is intended for young readers aged from two. It is written in rhyming couplets, with the same pattern repeated (with a few words changed each time, as the story progresses) several times.

Plot[edit]

The protagonist of The Gruffalo is a mouse. The story of the mouse's walk through the woods unfolds in two phases; in both the mouse uses cunning to evade danger.

The mouse goes for a walk in the forest and on his way encounters several dangerous animals (a fox, an owl, and a snake). Each of these animals, clearly intent on eating the mouse, invites him back to their home for lunch. The cunning mouse declines each offer, and to dissuade further advances he tells each animal that he is going to have lunch with his friend, a gruffalo. The mouse describes features of the gruffalo's monstrous anatomy and, frightened that this gruffalo might eat them, each animal takes flight. The mouse gloats to himself; he knows the gruffalo is a fictional monster:

Silly old fox, doesn't he know?
there's no such thing as a gruffalo!

After he has seen off the last animal, however, the mouse is shocked to encounter a real gruffalo, bearlike and hideous and with all the frightening features the mouse thought that he was inventing. True to his reputation, the gruffalo threatens to eat the mouse, but again the mouse is cunning. He tells the gruffalo that he, the mouse, is the scariest animal in the forest. The two walk through the forest, and encounter the dangerous animals which had earlier menaced the mouse. Each is terrified by the sight of the pair and hides, and each time the gruffalo becomes more impressed with the mouse's apparent toughness. Exploiting this, the mouse threatens to eat the gruffalo, who himself flees.

Recognition[edit]

The Gruffalo won the gold award (in the 0-5 years category) from the 1999 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. It won the 2000 Nottingham/Experian Children's book award, and the Blue Peter "best book to read aloud" award. The audio version won the "Best Children's Audio" award in the Spoken Book Awards.

It was the UK's bestselling picture book of 2000, and has gone on to sell over one million copies in 31 editions worldwide. Translations include German (Der Grüffelo), Italian (A spasso col mostro) and French (Gruffalo).

Further Gruffalo products[edit]

The book was initially sold as a small (roughly A5) boardbook, and later as a larger (roughly A4) boardbook version. An audio book version, narrated by Imelda Staunton, was released in 2002, and a jigsaw book version (ISBN 1405034963) was published in 2004. The book is also sold packaged with a gruffalo soft toy.

The "Gruffalo song" was released with the audiobook, as a standalone CD single, and on a musical CD with other songs from Donaldson's books.

The book was made into a 50 minute musical stage play by the Tall Stories theatre troupe. The play toured the UK, including a stint at London's Royal National Theatre, before moving to venues in New York City's Broadway and Warsaw. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Really Useful Group made a DVD version of the Tall Stories stageshow.

Donaldson and Scheffler's sequel, 2004's The Gruffalo's Child (which tells the story of the gruffalo's child, warned by its parent of the the terrifying mouse) won the "Best Children's Book" award in the 2005 British Book Awards.

External links[edit]