Imelda Burke

The Gruffalo is a children's picture book by the English author Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler. It tells the story of a mouse strolling in a wood and encountering a series of predators culminating in the fictional 'Gruffalo'. The Gruffalo was first published in 1999 in Britain by Macmillan Children's Books. It is about 700 words long and is written in rhyming couplets featuring repetitive verse. It is an example of a trickster story and was inspired by a Chinese folk tale called …