The Gruffalo tells the story of a mouse who goes for a walk in the 'deep, dark wood'. He wanders along encountering the fox, the owl, the snake, all of whom invite him to their homes for food. He rebuffs them telling them he has a prior date with The Gruffalo; his horrible description of the Gruffalo's orange eyes, purple prickles and turned out toes scares each animal away, and as the mouse wanders on, he mutters, "Doesn't he know? There's no such thing as a Gruffalo". Only to bump into the Gruffalo further into the woods. He then uses the snake, then the owl, then the fox as tools to convince the Gruffalo, that he, the mouse, is in fact the scariest animal in the wood. The story ends with the mouse eating his lunch, a nut, having survived his walk in the deep, dark wood.
One of my favourite things about The Gruffalo is how the tiny mouse, the underdog, outsmarts all of the other animals in the forest that are trying to eat him...even The Gruffalo himself. Everybody loves an underdog and this mouse certainly delivers.
Besides the rhythm and the rhyme, this is a fantastic book to read aloud with a youngster. They love the repetition which encourages them to join in and the arc of the story is simple and predictable for them to understand (the mouse coming across the fox, the owl and the snake, meeting the Gruffalo, then returning back to the snake, the owl and the fox in reverse order). It's a classic tale to return to again and again, your child will be begging for re-runs...and you'll be glad of it!
(I've read all of Julia Donaldson's books now, we have quite the collection, every single one is definitely worth a read.)
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