Push, pull and slide the moving mechanisms to meet all your favourite characters from the deep dark wood in this brilliant board book based on the bestselling classic picture book, The Gruffalo ... Read more Turn the story into a play, using the correct layout. Could you perform this for others? Watch this version for some inspiration: From Julia Donaldson, the bestselling author of The Gruffalo, comes Princess Mirror-Belle and the Party Hoppers, the exciting adventures of a princess with a difference. Full o... Read more Make your own life-size model of the Gruffalo. Take a look at this example, created by Ann Plowman: Gruffalo in the Forest". Forestry England. Archived from the original on 28 August 2022 . Retrieved 28 August 2022.

Visit the farm in this audio edition of A Squash and a Squeeze, read by Imelda Staunton and Steven Pacey - the first ever book from the unparalleled picture book partnership of Julia Don... Read moreFrom Julia Donaldson, the bestselling author of The Gruffalo, comes Princess Mirror-Belle and the Sea Monster's Cave, the exciting adventures of a princess with a difference. <... Read more Explore the deep dark wood with Mouse and see if you can spot the Gruffalo in this interactive novelty book, based on the bestselling picture book, The Gruffalo – with peep-holes a... Read more This brilliantly funny animal counting story is perfect for listening to at home, in the car, at bedtime – or any time at all! In an article titled "Humour and the locus of control in 'The Gruffalo'", Betsie van der Westhuizen identifies the following types of humour used in The Gruffalo: "humour with regard to the narrative aspects, humour with regard to the poetic aspects, visual humour and humour and the performing arts". [17] She writes that the most common use of humour in the story is incongruity, arising from the sense that "everything is not as it should be". [18] Some examples include the mouse averting the predators and the unusual descriptions of food, such as "owl ice cream" and "scrambled snake". [19] She writes that there are different experiences of humour among different ages of children who read The Gruffalo: three to five year olds will appreciate the elements of surprise and repetition in the story; six to eight year olds will enjoy the rhyme and rhythm of the text and the story's hyperbole. [17] As for visual representations of humour, van der Westhuizen writes that an example occurs when the mouse scares away the snake, accompanied by fragmented images of the imaginary gruffalo's features, then immediately afterwards comes across the real Gruffalo. [20] It was a rule we held to be self-evident that you couldn’t afford to do rhyming books,” Wilson, who then worked in Methuen’s rights department, told me, somewhat sheepishly. (The book has since sold more than 1.5m copies, and Donaldson’s work has been translated into more than 50 languages.) Today, a significant proportion of picture books are written in verse, somewhat to Donaldson’s bemusement. “I think there’s far too many rhyming books. And a lot of them – I don’t want to sound vain or anything – a lot of them make me cringe.”

but the king is very fussy; he tries all the cooks in the kingdom, but no one is good enough. T... Read more Axel Scheffler is the best-selling, award-winning illustrator of many of the world’s favourite picture books. Born in Hamburg, Axel moved to England over thirty years ago to study illustration. Perhaps best-known for his collaborations with Julia Donaldson, including the modern classic The Gruffalo, which has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide and been translated into over 60 languages, Axel has also illustrated novelty titles for younger readers such as Noisy Farm and The Bedtime Bear, as well as the Pip and Posy series. Axel lives in London with his partner and daughter. Children’s authors are often described as being in touch with their inner child, or childlike. With Donaldson, it’s more that she so vividly remembers the experience of her own childhood, that she remembers what it’s like to encounter a grownup. “I always used to think: why do grownups not walk along walls? Is it because they don’t want to – which is unthinkable – or do they want to terribly, but they know that grownups just mustn’t?”Where is Monkey's mummy? It's not too much fun being lost in the jungle, and little monkey wants his mum. A kindly butterfly is keen to help, but they don't seem to be ha... Read more Picture books, Donaldson said, “are not like a novel. They’re really a bit more like a song. Because they’re short, the structure becomes very important.” Many of her books centre on a refrain, which will dictate the meter. “If it’s going to rhyme, it’s just terribly important that there’s some repeated phrase, some sort of chorus-y bit.” She came up with the monster’s name “Gruffalo” because it happened to rhyme with the mouse’s refrain: “Silly old Fox, didn’t you know?”