Readers may have missed the literary event of the year this autumn. Another 250 pages of Ian McEwan’s juvenile sexual disappointments? No. Richard Osman setting a heartwarming murder mystery in a rural mosque? No. In fact, it was the best-selling author in British history returning to the character who made her fortune: Julia Donaldson and The Gruffalo Granny.
In an industry that usually provides endless dross, Donaldson has maintained the unfashionable ability to write poetry for children which actually scans and rhymes, usually telling wry, memorable stories beloved by recent generations of British children. She is best known for her double act with illustrator Axel Scheffler, churning out family classics such as Stick Man, Tiddler and, of course, The Gruffalo.
In 2026, the bar for children’s books is depressingly low
It was with some excitement, then, that I picked up a copy of The Gruffalo Granny to read to my children. Were we in for another bedtime favourite? Alas, Donaldson appears to have totally phoned it in. Somewhat controversially among parents, I felt she had already diminished the brand with The Gruffalo’s Child, the first sequel, a substantially less clever book than the original. But this latest iteration is even weaker. It smacks of publisher pressure rather than creative endeavour.
For starters, the story is essentially a sitcom clip-show episode – that infamous symptom of writers and producers who have fewer creative ideas than they do contractual obligations. The basic premise is borrowed from One Thousand and One Nights, with the cunning Odyssean mouse telling stories each night until the Gruffalo and his child fall asleep, in order to stave off being cooked in a stew to feed the eponymous Gruffalo Granny upon her arrival. Such adaptation is no bad thing; using the premise of classic folk tales can be an excellent way to write a children’s book. The first Gruffalo book is itself based on an old Chinese story about a mouse and a tiger.
The trouble is that the stories the mouse tells in The Gruffalo Granny are all existing pieces of Donaldson-Scheffler IP, rather than original tales for this latest book. The wily rodent rehashes the stories of Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale and Monkey Puzzle.
There has always been a slightly self-referential streak in Donaldson-Scheffler books (there is a Gruffalo Easter egg in every book published since), but this felt far too much. It feels like either laziness, writing under instruction from the publisher and their marketing team, or an author a bit too self-satisfied with her own success. ‘Oh, the cleverness of me!’, as Peter Pan once said.
I will confess that my children found the appearance of the stories within the story very amusing, but ‘the children like it!’ is not a reliable indicator of whether a children’s book is actually any good. Bright colours, familiar faces and shallow humour can entertain children depressingly well. By bringing in her other well-known stories to carry this one, it felt like Donaldson had taken a leaf from The Big Bang Theory writers’ guide, where writers feel they are owed laughs and excitement not for crafting good gags but merely for stringing together a series of references to recognisable pop-culture properties.
There is then the problem of the book’s conclusion (spoilers), wherein we learn that the mouse stew would have been in vain, since the Gruffalo Granny has given up meat. Aside from their detailed anatomy, the one thing we know for sure about gruffaloes (a zero plural, surely) is that their favourite food is mouse. Granted, they have some flat teeth and so are likely omnivorous, but it feels a little bit right-on for this unmarried grandma to turn up and tell us that she’s foregone a key source of protein, wearing a tote bag and looking as if she might be about to join some other pensioners on a Just Stop Oil protest. I couldn’t help but think of the hippies in Futurama who believe they have taught a lion to eat tofu.
Even Donaldson’s usually reliable command of metre seems to have lapsed. I have tried reading this latest offering aloud numerous times and cannot, for the life of me, find a fluid rhythm. It’s a far cry from the soaring balladic heights of The Highway Rat.
Has Donaldson lost it? Her last couple of big books were also disappointing. Jonny Gentoo was average, and The Baddies rehashed her own idea of the cunning mouse and featured a somewhat incongruous young lady from the subcontinent in a traditional Grimm’s fairy-tale Alpine setting.
In 2026, the bar for children’s books is depressingly low. It’s a shame that Donaldson, of all people, has come in below it on such a high-profile release. As a father of four who’s going to be reading bedtime stories for quite some time, I need her to up her game as soon as possible.
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