The Gruffalo

The Gruffalo is a British children’s picture book by writer and playwright Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, that tells the story of a mouse, the protagonist of the book, taking a walk in the woods. The book has sold over 13 million copies,[1] has won several prizes for children’s literature, and has been developed into plays on both the West End and Broadway and even an Oscar nominated animated film.

The Gruffalo was initially published in 1999 in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Children’s Books (ISBN 0-333-71093-2) as a 32-page hardback edition, was followed six months later by a paperback edition, and subsequently by a small-format board book edition. It was penned for readers aged three to seven, and is about 700 words long. It is written in rhyming couplets, featuring repetitive verse with minor variance.

A mouse walks through the wood and encounters predators (first a fox, then an owl, and finally a snake). Each of these animals, clearly intending to eat the mouse, invites him to their home for a meal. The cunning mouse declines each offer and uses clever tricks to evade danger and dissuade further advances. He tells each animal that he plans to dine with his friend, a “Gruffalo”; a monstrous creature whose frightening features he describes. He tells them the Gruffalo’s favourite food is the relevant animal. Frightened that the Gruffalo might eat them, each animal flees. Convinced the Gruffalo is fictional, the mouse gloats thus:

Silly old fox/owl/snake, doesn’t he know?
there’s no such thing as a Gruffalo!
However, after getting rid of the last animal, the mouse is shocked to encounter a real Gruffalo – with all the frightening features the mouse thought that he was inventing. 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 wood. Laughing, the Gruffalo agrees to follow the mouse as he demonstrates how feared he is. The two walk through the wood, encountering in turn the animals that had menaced the mouse. Each is terrified by the sight of the pair and escapes to his home – and each time the Gruffalo becomes more impressed with the mouse’s apparent toughness. Exploiting this, the mouse threatens to eat the Gruffalo, who flees; leaving the mouse to eat a nut in peace.

The story is based on a Chinese folk tale of a fox that borrows the terror of a tiger. Donaldson was unable to think of rhymes for “tiger” so instead she invented a word that rhymes with “know”.[2][3]

The Gruffalo won the gold award (in the 0–5 years category) of the 1999 Nestlé Smarties Book Prize. It was the UK’s best-selling picture book of 2000, 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.[4] In November 2009 the book was voted “best bedtime story” by listeners of BBC Radio 2.[5] In a 2010 survey by UK charity Booktime, the book came first in a list of children’s favourite books.[6]