The Gruffalo - Softcover

Julia Donaldson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0333710932 ISBN 13: 9780333710937

Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd, 2001

Synopsis

The nation's favourite bedtime story! "A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good." Walk further into the deep dark wood, and discover what happens when the quick-thinking mouse comes face to face with an owl, a snake and a hungry gruffalo . . . Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler's The Gruffalo has become a bestselling phenomenon across the world. This award-winning rhyming story of a mouse and a monster is now a modern classic, and will enchant children for years to come.

About this title

About the Author

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. 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 also writes fiction as well as poems, plays and songs and her brilliant live children's shows are always in demand. Julia and her husband Malcolm divide their time between Sussex and Edinburgh. Axel Scheffler is a star illustrator whose instantly recognisable, warm and witty illustrations have achieved worldwide acclaim and numerous awards. 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. He also illustrates the popular Pip and Posy series. Born in Hamburg, Axel now lives with his family in London.

From Publishers Weekly

The eponymous character introduced by this British team owes a large debt to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are. When Mouse meets Fox in the "deep dark wood," he invents a story about the gruffalo, described very much like Sendak's fearsome quartet of wild thingsA"He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws." The gullible fox runs away when Mouse tells him that the gruffalo's favorite food is roasted fox. "Silly old Fox!" says Mouse, "Doesn't he know?/ There's no such thing as a gruffalo!" Owl and Snake follow suit until, with a turn of the page, Mouse runs into the creature he has imagined. Quick-thinking Mouse then tells the monster, "I'm the scariest creature in this deep dark wood./ Just walk behind me and soon you'll see,/ Everyone for miles is afraid of me." Fox, Owl and Snake appear to be terrified of the tiny mouse, but readers can plainly see the real object of their fears. By story's end, the gruffalo flees, and Mouse enjoys his nut lunch in peace. Despite the derivative plot line, debut author Donaldson manipulates the repetitive language and rhymes to good advantage, supplying her story with plenty of scary-but-not-too-scary moments. Scheffler's gruffalo may seem a goofy hybrid of Max's wild things, but his cartoonlike illustrations build suspense via spot-art previews of the monster's orange eyes, black tongue and purple prickles until the monster's appearance in full. Ages 4-8.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Macmillan Pub Ltd
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0333710932
• ISBN 13: 9780333710937
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 32