Opinion Welcome back, Gruffalo

Like Pooh drifting back to the Hundred Acre Wood or Peter Rabbit stealing once more into Mr McGregor’s garden, there’s a rustle in the forest, a whisper of childhood come again. After more than two decades, British writer Julia Donaldson and German illustrator Axel Scheffler’s goofball of a monster, Gruffalo, is set to return, complete with “knobbly knees and turned-out toes and a poisonous wart at the end of his nose”. The first book, The Gruffalo, appeared in 1999, followed by The Gruffalo’s Child in 2005. The news of the third in the picture-book series, to be published in September 2026, comes like the visit of a long-lost friend: Unexpected, thrilling, and utterly welcome.

In the world of picture books, Donaldson is no meek mouse but a monster cult. The story of a little mouse’s clever defiance in a predator-filled forest has been  part of the architecture of childhoods across generations, a resounding validation at a time of brief attention spans. She had set out to write a play based on a Chinese tale about a tiger, but Donaldson’s inability to find a word rhyming with “tiger” led, instead, to the serendipitous birth of Gruffalo.

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Children’s literature is replete with storied comebacks. A A Milne’s characters outlived him to amble through sequels; Narnia flickered anew in later tales; even Paddington resurfaced for marmalade-sticky adventures. So what might Gruffalo find emerging from his cave? A world bleaker and more complicated but still full of children alive to the thrill of believing in the impossible. That sometimes the shadows in the wood shift just enough to reveal familiar silhouettes. That monsters can make for good friends, and that courage can come in the smallest, squeakiest of packages.