He has terrible tusks, terrible claws, terrible teeth in his terrible jaws, knobbly knees, turned-out toes, a poisonous wart at the end of his nose, orange eyes, a tongue that’s black and – last but not least – purple prickles down his back. He is Julia Donaldson’s Gruffalo and he bestrides children’s publishing like a colossus.
The bipedal bear-like monster hit British shelves in 1999, with appealing illustrations by Donaldson’s long-time collaborator Axel Scheffler. In the ensuing 25 years, more than 18 million copies of the book and its sequel, The Gruffalo’s Child, have been sold and it has been translated into 107 languages and dialects. German: Der Grüffelo. Finnish: Mörkö. Irish: An Garbhán. There has been a BBC version, part of a near-annual series of star-studded animations based on Donaldson’s books. There are stage versions, Gruffalo plush toys, Gruffalo costumes, Gruffalo biscuits.
In fact, the Gruffalo is so popular that his creator believes he is too big for his paws. “I think the Gruffalo’s the one everyone has heard of, even people who haven’t read the book,” Donaldson, 75, told BBC Radio Scotland earlier this week. “To be honest, what I like is when people single out one of my other books as their favourite, as I think the Gruffalo’s a bit spoilt.”
The story is based on an old Chinese folk tale, The Fox that Borrows the Terror of a Tiger. In Donaldson’s version, the mouse makes his way through a deep, dark wood. He encounters a series of potential predators: a fox, a snake and an owl. He dissuades them from eating him by telling them about the Gruffalo, a mythical apex predator. Or so the smug mouse thinks, until he encounters the beast. On the verge of being eaten, the mouse improvises and tells the Gruffalo he is in fact the scariest creature in the wood, and will prove it if they walk back the way he came. Seeing the Gruffalo walking behind the mouse prompts the fox, snake and owl to hightail it. With 700 mostly short words, a globe-spanning empire was born. Donaldson has said that she sometimes feels like the mouse in the story, who imagines a monster only to find it has become real.
As she told the BBC this week: “He hogs too much of the attention really.”
