The Gruffalo - a truly wonderful children's book

[Fran]

Seeing as I know at least some of you have young children, I wanted to tell you about my all-time-favourite children's book the Gruffalo.

"The Gruffalo? What's a Gruffalo?"

There is everything to like about this story from the beautiful, detailed illustrations to the flowing rhyme and clever story.

My 6-year-old nephew has loved this book since he was 2, and now we read a page each. I'm 32 and I love reading this book as well and having a nephew gives me the excuse

What makes it extra special for Objectivists is that Mouse has to use his head to stop himself from being eaten. Here's the gist of the story:

Mouse takes a walk in the deep, dark forest and on his way he meets a Fox who thinks that mouse is very good to eat, so he invites Mouse back to his den for lunch - failing to mention of course that it'll be Mouse who is 'lunch'.

However, Mouse is not fooled and invents a story about why he can't stop for lunch as he's going to see his friend the Gruffalo.

"A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?" asks Fox.

"A gruffalo! Why, didn't you know? He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws." And his favourite meal is roasted fox.

On hearing this Fox runs off leaving Mouse safe, to which Mouse chuckles to himself: "Silly old Fox, doesn't he know that there's no such thing as a Gruffalo!"

Mouse meets Owl and then Snake who similarly want to eat him. Twice more Mouse prevents himself from being eaten by describing to them more about his friend the Gruffalo: "...and knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of its nose."

But of course, everybody knows that there's no such thing as a Gruffalo... until Mouse meets him, and he really does have "terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws and knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of its nose." And what's more his favourite food turns out to be a Mouse sandwich!

Oh help! So, Mouse has to do some quick thinking...

...and he tells the Gruffalo that he doesn't want to eat him because he's really the most frightening creature in the whole forest. The Gruffalo scoffs at this suggestion, but follows Mouse back the way Mouse has come. On the way they meet Fox, Owl and Snake, who on seeing Mouse with his terrifying friend the Gruffalo, all rush off thinking that it's them the Gruffalo wants to eat. And so the Gruffalo (being a bit thick) believes Mouse's bluff and he too runs off. Leaving Mouse safe to eat his lunch.

Here's the link to Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014240387...5Fencoding=UTF8

To read all the 5* reviews from Amazon.co.uk (it's a British book) http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/custome...reviews.start=1

And here's the Gruffalo website: http://www.gruffalo.com/index2.html