“We can’t go into the neighboring forest, it’s dangerous for us.
- Dangerous? Why? - There, in the impenetrable thicket,
There lives a Mouse, a terrible beast, dashing and merciless."
...So said the Gruffalo's father, but one night the little Gruffalo searched the entire Forbidden Forest, far and wide, asking the fox, the owl, and the snake, but she couldn't find the terrible beast. Now she knows everyone was fooling her and there's no such thing as a scary Mouse... Or is there?
It's hard to imagine today that there was no Gruffalo. Since its first publication in England in 1999, 26 million books about the terrifying beast with purple spikes on its back have found homes around the world, and the character himself speaks 86 foreign languages. The Russian Gruffalo is turning 15 today. Happy birthday, Gruffalo!
A fairy tale in verse for adults to read to children.