One book series which is A&A’s all time favourite is The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child by Julia Donaldson. These books, which have won several prizes for children’s literature and have also been developed into plays and animated films, is an instant hit among kids. These are best suited for kids between 3-7 years age.
The Gruffalo
This book unveils the story of a mouse, walking through the woods and encountering several dangerous animals like a fox, an owl and a snake. The mouse with his clever tricks evades danger. Finally, he comes across Gruffalo- a monstrous creature. The tiny mouse with it’s cleverness, surpasses the Gruffalo too.
The story gives the moral message of using one’s imagination, wisdom and brain power to protect oneself from predators.
The Gruffalo’s Child
The Gruffalo’s child is the sequel to The Gruffalo. The story is about the Gruffalo’s child (a daughter) who, despite her father’s warning, sets off into the deep dark woods to find the big bad mouse who tricked her father (The Gruffalo).
She encounters the little mouse who invites her to meet the big bad mouse. The tiny mouse recreates an enlarged, fearsome shadow by using moonlight and introduces it as the big bad mouse. The Gruffalo’s child flees away and returns to the Gruffalo cave with faith in her father restored.
The story repeats it’s moral of ‘brains over brawn’ i.e mental acuity and wisdom surpasses physical power and strength.
Why We Love Reading These Two Books –
There are a multitude of positive benefits of reading the Gruffalo stories to toddlers.
1. Both these books include spoken rhythm, i.e, song like quality of the words, which make these a joy to read aloud. The language used is simple, rhythmical and naturally flowing. You just read the lines and the rhyme comes naturally.
- The repetition of words. encourage recognition and phonological awareness in kids.
The colourful illustrations by Axel Scheffler complement the words perfectly. Both the books are vividly illustrated, with colourful, realistic pictures done to suit the imagination of a child. The scary Gruffalo doesn’t comes across as scary at all but a cute creature. Post reading the book, A&A often like to flip through its pages just to see the images and illustrations again.
A&A also love these books for the gentle humour in the storyline.
I personally find these stories as apt to discuss with A&A about different emotions /feeling (scared, happy, surprised, etc).
6. I also used these books to acquaint A&A about different body parts – physical appearance, colours and animals.
7. As they grow up, the Gruffalo story can also be used to make them understand the idea of empathy, understanding and differentiating right from wrong, etc.
- Both the stories have a beautiful storyline, teaching it’s young readers, how to face difficulties of life strongly and cleverly
Stories are the best way to teach important life lessons to children. And the Gruffalo series, especially can help in their personal, social, linguistic and emotional development. Besides that, reading these stories are plain and simple fun, having feel-good factor that will put a smile on your kid’s face.
This post is a part of Blogchatter’s A2Z challenge – #BlogchatterA2Z on the alphabet ‘G’. My theme for this challenge is ‘Books for Kids’. You can find all 26 posts on this topic under the hashtags #themomsagas_books on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
