The Gruffalo

The little brown mouse is quite a clever and cheeky little fellow. I absolutely love how this book shows young readers how to use their brains rather than their brawn when standing up to bullies/people bigger than them. I believe the author certainly understands what it is like to navigate through a world that's much too big for them alone (which especially applies to kids), and this definitely comes across with the little brown mouse's adventurous (and dare I say fearless in the face of danger) attitude. This story is great for anyone of any age, as it helps to be reminded that in this world, we don't always need to be the biggest or strongest.

I read this to my two year old and I think I may have loved it even more than she did. Hehe.
The illustrations are just brilliant. Four thumbs up for Axel Scheffler.
Julia Donaldson has a natural flair in writing that is a joy to read. She's great with rhyming and telling an original story with interesting characters and still adding a moral and a hidden meaning that is important for children to be instilled with. I love books that not only entertain but have lessons behind them.
This amongst many of her books, do just that.
Thank you for entertaining kids and adults alike. Come on, don't lie, you know you read it alone too! :P
5 out of 5 stars. *****

A mouse takes a walk through the deep dark woods. She meets a few predators along the way, including a Gruffalo, but outwits them all. OMG, this is my favorite board book of all time. I love reading it to my son so much that I can recite it. Definitely suggested for babies through five year olds.

I love the way Gruffalo roles off the tongue as you read this book aloud, and all the wonderful rhyming---the paragraphs practically sing. The story itself is wonderfully clever, with the high point in middle when the trickster mouse runs into the gruffalo. And he tricks the monster as well, highly satisfying.

Naturally, any book that rhymes is a good read to me. But what I love about this book is how clever it is. Instead of a character using lies to hurt others, the mouse in this story convinces predators that he is visiting a ferocious Gruffalo (which he says doesn't even exist). This scares the predators into running away and the mouse is left unharmed. The dialogue between multiple characters in every page makes this the perfect read aloud book for a classroom, the descriptions bring the pictures to life, and the ending provides a clever twist. This story just goes to show that being able to think on your feet can be life-saving.

This Smarties Book Prize gold award winner was chosen by my 5 year old from his brother's school book fair. He thoroughly enjoyed reading it to me at bedtime, and it is currently a favourite which sits on his bedside shelf, and which he keeps re-reading to himself (both silently and out loud), and to anyone who will listen.

The story, told in rhyming couplets, is about a mouse walking through the woods and avoiding being eaten by the other denizens of the woods by telling them scary stories of his imaginary friend, the gruffalo ... until he meets a real gruffalo, who would also like to eat him!

'A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood.
A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.
"Where are you going to, little brown mouse?
Come

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and have lunch in my underground house."
"It's terribly kind of you, Fox, but no -
I'm going to have lunch with a gruffalo." '

Our edition, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, has lots of pictures interspersed through the text, including lots of full page and double page illustrations. The illustrations are reasonably simple at first glance, but with lots of background information, in terms of plants and small woodland creatures.

The rhythm is catchy, and the rhymes form several repeating patterns that makes the story easy to read and - quite frankly - addictive for young readers. I have a suspicion that my son first came across the book in school, and liked it so much that he decided to get it for his own when he came across it at the book fair.

This was the first time I had read the story myself, and it's delightful. The mouse imagines all kinds of scary features for the gruffalo, and I wondered if the real gruffalo would look anything like his imagination - and whether the mouse would escape from such a scary creature.

It's funny and clever, and my five year old loves it.

Five stars.
5***** show less

This book is an interesting tale that begins with the main protagonist, a mouse, and his journey through the woods trying to avoid being eaten by several animals. In order to save himself, he creates an imaginary monster named the Gruffalo, and it indeed does scare of the animals that attempt to eat the mouse. Each time the mouse encounters an animal, he makes up the most scary and extravagant physical features. One day, the mouse meets a real Gruffalo, and in order to avoid being consumed by it, the mouse tells the Gruffalo that he is more scary. In order to prove this, the mouse takes the Gruffalo to the animals that the mouse had scared off before with the tale of the Gruffalo, and those animals run off again at the sight of the show more Gruffalo, but the mouse claims that it was really because of him. The cunning mouse’s technique was strategic, as he survived in the end, but there was indeed an underlying message to this story through all of the descriptive text and corresponding illustrations. The main message of “The Gruffalo” is that physical appearance is not important, rather it can be misleading and an unfair interpretation of one’s true personality and characteristics. In the end of this story, the mouse actually scares off the Gruffalo instead of the Gruffalo himself, who was big and scary in contrast with the small and overlooked mouse. The mouse, in the end, was the victor and the other animals were fearful of him, no matter how they all looked (even if the bigger animals were stronger and more powerful and the mouse was smaller and weaker). show less