Would you believe that after six years of reading classic picture books (and plenty of new favorites), my daughter and I had completely skipped The Gruffalo? I had never even heard of the book until I saw some movie about the book available on Redbox. We skipped the movie and borrowed the book, which is incredibly adorable and worth reading immediately.
The central character in the book is not the monster pictured on the front, but a little mouse who happens to be very clever. My daughter could tell you how clever mice are, of course; ours escaped enough times to prove it! This mouse makes up a monster called the gruffalo and tells every animal that attempts to eat him that the gruffalo will be along any moment for their lunch date. The gruffalo happens to have a favorite meal—which is, of course, whichever animal the mouse is attempting to escape from (the owl, the fox, the snake, etc.)!
