Customer Reviews

The Gruffalo

5 star:		(123)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A review of the hardcover edition applies to the softcover as well:
The Gruffalo is a delightfully irreverent story about a mouse and an imaginary monster, sure to please grown-ups as well as children. This is a case where you CAN judge the book by its humorous cover, and you won't be disappointed. Axel Scheffler's brightly colored and too-silly-to-be-really-scary illustrations set the tone for this light-hearted romp through multiple layers of comic irony; and Julia Donaldson's marvelous doggerel perfectly realizes the mouse's sprightly character.

It's much more than great fun, though. The Gruffalo also has tremendous resonance with familiar elements of Western culture. This is a story that Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell all could love. It's a perfect little Hero's Journey: it's got "the deep dark wood," a confrontation with the Monster Within, and a victorious return to the ordinary world where a nut is good. Had this been a fable of Aesop, we could expect our hero to be eaten right in the middle, and we would be left with some such lesson as "Don't be too clever for your own good." Instead, our mythical mouse makes his Eternal Return bearing a subtle wisdom that echoes the teachings of the world's greatest mystics.

The very structure of the story is classic, reminiscent of the great repetitive folk tales, such as "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," "The Three Little Pigs," or "The Little Red Hen." The mouse's encounter with a dangerous predator is repeated with slight variation in the wording three times (yes, three times, as in three crows of a cock, three days in the belly of the fish, three temptations under a bo tree...) then, after a dramatic climax, the story works its way back with another set of three variations as the mouse retraces his steps on the path toward the real climax.

The Gruffalo's greatest fun for grown-ups comes from its heaps of irony. First, there's the expectation of an Aesopian fable. That expectation is thwarted by the clever mouse. Second are the characters of the animals: they're all wrong. The mouse is not meek and fearful; he's bold and confident, a real smart-aleck, in fact. Then the fierce predators turn out to be wimps. Not only that, these are the exact animals that always represent intelligence in Western folk literature -- the clever fox -- the wise owl -- the subtle snake. Here they are all outwitted by the littlest of animals. Third is the basic irony of the mouse's meeting with the gruffalo -- maybe the mouse is not so clever, after all. Fourth, the terrible monster...! Fifth, he went through all that for a nut. Sixth, that story was a profoundly archetypal tale in goofy rhyme, with cartoon pictures. Seventh, I actually wrote this review, and you actually read it. What's next? Am I going to tell you that Harvey Potter's Balloon Farm is a model for education reform? (well . . . yes!)

Finally, The Gruffalo really is a fun and loveable book. One of the best for sharing with your kids.

I read this book to my kindergarten class and they LOVE it! The children act it out, sequence the story through pictures, journal about it and talk about it for months it is one of their favorites and mine too! I love reading it because they get so excited and it is so much fun to read over and over!

Wonderful story of an imaginative mouse who while taking a walk through the woods makes up a story about a animal he calls a Gruffalo , he makes up this animal to protect himself from the various predators (fox, owl, snake ) that want to eat him .He succeeds in frightening away the animals ,but than he meets the animal of his imagination a Gruffalo. Now he has a bigger problem the Gruffalo wants to eat him, so he tells the Gruffalo to walk behind him through the wooods and see how afraid the animals are of him (the mouse that is ). The Gruffalo of course doesn't believe that the animals could possibly be afraid of a mouse so he walks behind the mouse , and when the animals of the woods see the Gruffalo behind the mouse they runaway in fright and the Gruffalo believes that the mouse was telling the truth and runs away from the mouse himself. Very enjoyable for both parent and child. Wonderfully illustrated, I highly recommend the Gruffalo

I bought this to replace our current tattered read-so-much version and the copy I received has been altered from the original text! I have no idea why except that some clever fellow decided that Americans wouldn't recognize some of the layout of the language - as the book is written with British wording - ridiculous! The part that says "oh my" fox said should read "I'm off!" Fox said .. this has totally changing the rhyme in some places. Not the book we've grown to love.. sending it back for the same the hard cover one I currently have and hopefully it will not be with the altered text!

This is a great book for K and 1st graders. The story is written in rhyming fashion and is very thought provoking and it gives lots of chances to guess what happens next. It follows a path and then returns to a ending that make you smile. Kids will love it. Illustrations are well done. Very Imaginative.

I saw an article about Julia Donaldson in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago and was intrigued enough to try to find a copy of the book -- thank you Amazon! The Gruffalo arrived today and lived up to my expectations as a book worth adding to my kiddie lit collection. The story is a simple one, told in rhyme, about a mouse who meets 3 animals and convinces each of them not to eat him because he is going to have lunch with a gruffalo and those 3 animals happen to be the gruffalo's favourite foods. Then he meets a gruffalo and convinces the gruffalo not to eat him because he, the mouse, is the toughest animal in the woods. And the gruffalo becomes a believer as he follows the mouse and all of the animals run away when they see the mouse? or is it the trailing gruffalo. The pictures by Axel Scheffler are well drawn, but what makes the book special is Julia Donaldson's ability to tell the story all in rhyme. She belongs on a shelf next to Dr. Seuss. This book should become more widely known to American parents; it is a real winner and well deserving of the "Smarties Gold Book Prize award. I see that Amazon is out of stock of both the board books and the cd's and tapes. Get with it Amazon and stock up for the Christmas rush!

We read lots and lots of books to our 2 year old daughter and I've never written a review before but this book really knocked our socks off. We LOVE this book in our house. It is not only fun for my daughter, who loves it when we use different voices for each of the characters, but is fun for us... So many books for this age group, particularly board books, are really boring after several reads. Even one of my all-time-favorite books from my childhood, "The Monster at the End of this Book" gets a bit wearing after the umpteenth read. But this one always stays fresh. This and "Is Your Mama A Lama" are at the top of our list, fun for a two year old and fun for the parents too. Get this book. You won't be disappointed.

This is such a great book, with excellent rhymes and rhythm to the text. It is an absolute favorite of both my husband and me to read to our 9-month-old, and we expect to be reading it with him for many, many years. (It's probably too advanced for him, but the bright, colorful pictures and the rhythm of the text keep him interested.) I'm so disappointed that it's become special order only - we wanted to get it as a gift for several nieces - it is really a great book and so much better than what you can find at a typical bookstore. (It might still be available from Amazon.co.uk if you can't get it here.)

This is a wonderful and engaging book to have in a classroom library. You can teach various writing and reading concepts such as: inferences, dialogue, patterns, punctuation and rhyme. Kids simply love it and are eager to participate in the reading.

It's surprising to me that this book is not better known here in the US; it's the quintessential picture book, and won several awards in Britain. Compared to most of the insipid picture books out there today (i.e., the ones where you think to yourself, I COULD HAVE WRITTEN THIS), this book really sparkles. It's fun to read aloud (i.e., it rhymes), has nice pictures (albeit not Caldecott material), an interesting and clever twist, and a moral: brains can beat brawn. And unlike some of the fine picture books that appeal to me, as a parent, this one passes the most important test: it's beloved by my toddler too. It's a constant choice for a bedtime story. If there were a Caldecott for picture book text as well as illustrations (and there really ought to be!), this book would win hands down. If you're looking for a great picture book (and one your child will remember into adulthood as a favorite), look no further.