The Gruffalo Read Free Books and Download eBooks
When Mouse takes a stroll through the woods, he meets a fox, an owl, and a snake who all want to eat him! So Mouse invents a gruffalo, a monster with "terrible tusks and terrible claws, terrible teeth, and terrible jaws." But will Mouse's frightful description be enough to scare off his foes? After all, there's no such thing as a gruffalo . . . is there? Sturdy pages and a cozy trim make this rhyming read-aloud perfect for preschoolers. Winner of the prestigious British Smarties Prize.
Lexile Measure: 200 (What's this?)
Board book: 26 pages
Publisher: Dial Books (January 27, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0803730470
ISBN-13: 978-0803730472
Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 0.6 x 7.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,151 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #11,148 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #53 in Books > Children's Books > Animals > Mice, Hamsters, Guinea Pigs & Squirrels #786 in Books > Children's Books > Humor
Age Range: 3 - 5 years
Grade Level: Preschool - Kindergarten
I bought this to replace our current tattered read-so-much version and the copy I received has been altered from the original text! I have no idea why except that some clever fellow decided that Americans wouldn't recognize some of the layout of the language - as the book is written with British wording - ridiculous! The part that says "oh my" fox said should read "I'm off!" Fox said .. this has totally changing the rhyme in some places. Not the book we've grown to love.. sending it back for the same the hard cover one I currently have and hopefully it will not be with the altered text!
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.
I read this book to my kindergarten class and they LOVE it! The children act it out, sequence the story through pictures, journal about it and talk about it for months it is one of their favorites and mine too! I love reading it because they get so excited and it is so much fun to read over and over!
This is a great book for K and 1st graders. The story is written in rhyming fashion and is very thought provoking and it gives lots of chances to guess what happens next. It follows a path and then returns to a ending that make you smile. Kids will love it. Illustrations are well done. Very Imaginative.
Wonderful story of an imaginative mouse who while taking a walk through the woods makes up a story about a animal he calls a Gruffalo , he makes up this animal to protect himself from the various predators (fox, owl, snake ) that want to eat him .He succeeds in frightening away the animals ,but than he meets the animal of his imagination a Gruffalo. Now he has a bigger problem the Gruffalo wants to eat him, so he tells the Gruffalo to walk behind him through the wooods and see how afraid the animals are of him (the mouse that is ). The Gruffalo of course doesn't believe that the animals could possibly be afraid of a mouse so he walks behind the mouse , and when the animals of the woods see the Gruffalo behind the mouse they runaway in fright and the Gruffalo believes that the mouse was telling the truth and runs away from the mouse himself. Very enjoyable for both parent and child. Wonderfully illustrated, I highly recommend the Gruffalo
I saw an article about Julia Donaldson in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago and was intrigued enough to try to find a copy of the book -- thank you ! The Gruffalo arrived today and lived up to my expectations as a book worth adding to my kiddie lit collection. The story is a simple one, told in rhyme, about a mouse who meets 3 animals and convinces each of them not to eat him because he is going to have lunch with a gruffalo and those 3 animals happen to be the gruffalo's favourite foods. Then he meets a gruffalo and convinces the gruffalo not to eat him because he, the mouse, is the toughest animal in the woods. And the gruffalo becomes a believer as he follows the mouse and all of the animals run away when they see the mouse? or is it the trailing gruffalo. The pictures by Axel Scheffler are well drawn, but what makes the book special is Julia Donaldson's ability to tell the story all in rhyme. She belongs on a shelf next to Dr. Seuss. This book should become more widely known to American parents; it is a real winner and well deserving of the "Smarties Gold Book Prize award. I see that is out of stock of both the board books and the cd's and tapes. Get with it and stock up for the Christmas rush!
The Gruffalo's Child The Gruffalo The Gruffalo's Child CD & Book Pack
