The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson

Hey, Story Seekers!

A little mouse walks into a forest.

A fox wants to eat him.

Then an owl wants to eat him.

Then a snake wants to eat him.

This mouse is having a rough walk.

Fortunately, he has something the predators don't.

A Gruffalo.

Unfortunately, the Gruffalo doesn't exist.

Even more unfortunately?

Yes, he does.

We're exploring The Gruffalo, written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, a rhyming story about one very small mouse who survives a deep dark wood by thinking faster than everybody trying to turn him into lunch.

Readit has inspected the Gruffalo and would like to discuss the poisonous wart on his nose.

Specifically: why would anybody touch it?

Fair.

Let's go into the woods.

Book Breakdown

Mouse is taking a stroll.

Fox sees him. Fox thinks Mouse looks delicious. Fox invites him home.

Mouse understands exactly what's happening here.

So he invents a friend.

The Gruffalo.

Huge. Terrible claws. Terrible teeth. And wouldn't you know it, the Gruffalo's favorite food happens to involve fox.

Fox suddenly remembers another appointment.

Mouse keeps walking.

Owl tries essentially the same trick. Mouse brings out the Gruffalo again, with a different favorite food.

Goodbye, Owl.

Snake? Same problem. Same imaginary monster. Same rapid exit.

By now Mouse has this forest figured out.

Then he meets the Gruffalo.

Uh-oh.

Everything Mouse invented is standing in front of him.

And this is where Axel Scheffler earns his half of the book, because every ridiculous detail we've been assembling in our heads arrives at once. Tusks. Claws. Orange eyes. Black tongue. Purple prickles. Knobbly knees. Turned-out toes.

And the wart.

He's a monster. He's also, faintly, an idiot. That balance is the whole design, and it's why the book doesn't tip into scary.

Mouse now has a serious problem, because the Gruffalo would also like to eat him.

So Mouse changes the trick.

He informs the Gruffalo that Mouse is the scariest creature in the entire wood.

Absurd. Look at him. He's a mouse.

But then they walk back through the forest together.

Fox sees Mouse with the Gruffalo. Fox runs.

Owl sees them. Owl runs.

Snake sees them. Snake runs.

And the Gruffalo doesn't work out that everybody is running from him.

He thinks they're running from Mouse.

One last job, then. Get rid of the Gruffalo.

Mouse does.

No muscles. No magic. No army.

Just one very small animal thinking very, very quickly.

For teachers and librarians: Lexile AD510L · ATOS 2.3 · 687 words · ages 3 to 7, preschool through grade 2. First published 1999, Dial in the US, thirty-two pages.

Jungle Jimmy's Journal

Mouse is a liar.

There. We've established it.

He's also lunch if he isn't.

That's what makes this work. Donaldson gives him no physical power whatsoever. She drops the smallest animal into a forest full of things that eat him and makes his brain do everything.

First he invents the Gruffalo. That works three times.

Then the book pulls the rug out. The thing he made up walks out of the woods.

Now what?

That's the page turn I like, because Mouse can't run the same trick again. He has to invent a second one.

And here's the part that's better than it needed to be. The second trick uses the first trick's leftovers. Fox, Owl and Snake already heard about the Gruffalo. So when Mouse strolls back through the woods beside the real thing, those earlier lies become the machinery of the new plan.

Donaldson built a trap in the first half and springs it in the second, in a picture book, in rhyme.

Kids follow it without anybody drawing them a diagram.

On reading it out loud: give the predators different voices, but don't go enormous. Fox should sound friendly enough that we all know he isn't. Owl gets his turn. Snake gets his.

Then the Gruffalo arrives and gets the big voice.

Meanwhile Mouse stays calm.

That's the funny part. Everybody around him has teeth. Mouse has a plan.

One honest caution, and Kirkus raised it back in 1999. Adults may clock the repeating pattern early and find the twists less surprising than the kids do.

True. But that's a description of most great read-alouds. The pattern is the point. A child who can feel the next encounter coming is a child who's participating, and participation beats surprise every time at this age.

Readit's Review

I would NOT go into this forest.

Everybody wants to eat you.

Fox wants to eat you.

Owl wants to eat you.

Snake wants to eat you.

Then a monster shows up.

Find a different trail.

I like Mouse because he keeps making stuff up and then the stuff he made up becomes REAL.

That would be bad.

If I invented a monster and then met it, I would not calmly make another plan.

I would run.

Also, the Gruffalo has too many weird parts.

Why are his toes turned out?

Why are his knees knobbly?

And WHO CHECKED THAT THE WART IS POISONOUS?

Did somebody test it?

I need answers.

My favorite part is when everybody runs away and the Gruffalo thinks they're scared of Mouse.

Come on, Gruffalo.

Look behind you.

YOU'RE HUGE.

What Others Think

Readers have been walking into this wood since 1999. Goodreads shows 4.47 out of 5 from 47,720 ratings and nearly 2,900 written reviews. That ties it with Room on the Broom as the highest-rated traditionally published book we've reviewed, which is not a coincidence, since it's the same two people.

The thing readers keep landing on is that the small guy wins with his head.

Sean Barrs: "Brains beat brawns every time."

Calista noticed the joke underneath it: "Foxes are supposed to be cunning, but it is the mouse who is cunning and manipulative. He or She manipulated all the predators fears against them to stay safe. That's pretty smart."

Ken speaks for a lot of parents: "One of the delights of parenthood is being able to enjoy some of the most popular children's books from the last 20 years."

And Jonathan O'Neill reviewed the entire book in its own meter, which is the only correct response:

A Girl picked a book from the shelf where it stood,
Her Daddy read the book and the book was good!

Not every child is gripped. Some readers report a toddler losing interest early, and the reason is structural: three predator encounters built on the same pattern can feel like three laps around the same tree if the rhyme doesn't take hold.

If your kid isn't a rhyme kid, this one may not convert them.

The Part Nobody Told Me

There's an animated film, and it's a serious piece of work. Magic Light made a 27-minute version that premiered on the BBC on Christmas Day 2009 to 9.8 million viewers and picked up an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short. Helena Bonham Carter narrates. Robbie Coltrane is the Gruffalo. John Hurt is the Owl.

Now here's the bit that made me sit up.

One of its directors is Max Lang. He also co-directed Room on the Broom, which earned him a second Oscar nomination.

And when he isn't directing, he illustrates picture books written by his wife, Suzanne Lang.

Including Grumpy Monkey.

Three books we've reviewed. One guy. I had no idea until I went looking, and now I can't unsee his hand in all of them: the timing, the faces, the way a character's whole body carries the joke.

Belly Laugh Scale

4 out of 5: Big-Time Belly Laughs

The Gruffalo looks ridiculous.

Mouse is ridiculously confident.

Three predators get scared off by a creature that doesn't exist.

Then the creature exists.

Then he gets tricked too.

That's a good day for comedy.

Scheffler does the heavy lifting, because the Gruffalo has to be dangerous and funny at the same time. Too frightening and this becomes a different book. Too cuddly and Mouse's problem evaporates.

Instead we get a monster who could probably eat you and also has knobbly knees.

Four out of five.

Respect the wart.

Final Explorer Verdict

I'd recommend The Gruffalo for ages 3 to 7.

It's especially good for kids who like rhyme, monsters, repeated phrases, and the enormous satisfaction of watching somebody underestimate the smallest guy in the room.

That's Mouse's whole advantage.

Everybody sees dinner.

Nobody sees trouble.

He can't overpower Fox. He can't overpower Owl. He can't overpower Snake. He certainly can't overpower the Gruffalo.

So he makes every one of them do the work for him.

And Scheffler keeps reinforcing the point visually. Mouse stays tiny on every page. The Gruffalo genuinely looks like he should own this forest.

But size isn't running the story.

Mouse is.

Keep exploring, Story Seekers!

Jungle Jimmy & Readit