The Gruffalo Review & Ratings

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The Gruffalo Review

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.

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