The Gruffalo
The Gruffalo is a British children's picture book by writer and playwright Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler, that tells the story of a mouse, the protagonist of the book, taking a walk in the woods. The book has sold over 13 million copies, has won several prizes for children's literature, and has been developed into plays on both the West End and Broadway and even an Oscar nominated animated film. The Gruffalo was initially published in 1999 in the United Kingdom by Macmillan Children's Books.
Stats for nerds
8recommend
10mentions
10people
2014–2026years
80% recommend20% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really wanted to like Iggy Peck, Ada Twist, and Rosie Revere, because they promote really positive messages. But man, the verse is really clumsy and poor in some areas. Not stellar writing.
To add to your list: anything by Julia Donaldson. The Gruffalo, Super Worm, Room on the Broom, the Whale and the Snail.
Perennial favs when my kids were 3-5
- Personally not really using AI directly with our kids but perhaps I can provide some insight to some areas. I've formally studied child language acquisition and have a toddler learning to read.
Early childhood development and storybooks is all over the place. The most successful books for kids are typically created by well-informed individuals or artist/writer combos who are better at the creative side than the education side but they're still pretty good at both.
The work of Julia Donaldson stands out as a leader in the field. She's responsible for the Gruffalo, The Snail and the Whale, Tiddler, and loads more. She's also got a series called Songbirds that are far more basic in their prose, but designed for early reading education. It's in those books that you'll see more method to the madness, with themed consonant and vowel pairings to hammer home elemental lessons for the youngest minds.
AI is chewing up a vast corpus of data that may contain snippets, tracts, or entire children's books, as well as studies and advice on child education. Its output will be a best match guess at what you prompt it, but it is unlikely to be a focussed educational tool like the Songbirds series is. Simply put: AI's strength will be a quick creative story crafted to a child's personal interests that can compete with even the most popular storybooks, but it might lack the nuance of stage-specific educational content.
That being said prompts can go a long way if you're prepared to do your own research and structure your instructions to narrow the output enough.
Another thing to be careful about is the pragmatic information in source data that will lack the weightings the AI needs to use appropriately. Things like dialect. If you use a storybook to teach vocabulary and pronunciation you can run into spelling and rhyming issues and more. We're British and read books from US relatives to our toddler and a book about Maine might try rhyming "on" with "dawn". In the UK that makes mum and dad sound like a rural country type from the South East, which neither of us are. The AI will be aware of phonetics, but is unlikely to weight it highly enough to produce your accent-specific rhymes, especially if they're not standard.
Another trap is to actually craft your kid's content to their interests, at least early on. Creative content is better opening their experience up as broadly as possible. But that's easy to mitigate. If they like dinosaurs, but their book on counting features mermaids, then use AI to make a dino-themed counting book. Just don't make everything dino-themed.
Extra aside - bedtime stories purposefully feature themes around sleep, contain more 'shhh' sounds, and repetitive sequences. Quite literally designed to send kids to sleep. But that muddies the AI waters when you want an output that engages the reader for educational purposes.
- Great essay, I was disappointed to find no reference to the best-selling author Julia Donaldson, or her masterwork, The Gruffalo.
The Gruffalo inhabits a territory never before seen in children's literature. It goes beyond existentialism and metaphysics and yet retains an adorable accessibility that a 2 year old can understand. Spoilers follow if you are still in the pre-Gruffalo phase of your life.
Already in line two of the whole book our protagonist, the mouse, is in mortal danger when the fox thinks "the mouse looked good" (to eat).
The mouse digs deeps into his dark imagination and concocts an enemy so abominable, based on his own worst possible fears, in the hope that it also scares away the fox. And by some miracle, a few burnished details and a roaring old wives' tale ("his favourite food is roasted fox") he actually extricates himself from mortal danger in front of this fast and formidable foe.
The process is repeated again with the owl and the snake. Each time the mouse digs deeper, building up a fictional image of a catastrophically horrendous creature that no sane animal would ever wish to encounter. Each time scaring off an increasingly deadly enemy. The ongoing survival of the mouse against all odds leads him to a fleeting moment of relaxation...
But then, before his own eyes, looming a footstep away...the very projection of his own and his enemies' worst fears. The Gruffalo - that he himself merely imagined - has been instantiated. His nightmare cannot be undone. The mouse must face his own creation.
But, we are dealing with a mouse of such pluck and chutzpah we know the story must continue. He tickles the Gruffalo with the preposterous assertion that the mouse is in fact the scariest animal in the wood. Chuckled by this, the Gruffalo entertains himself by following along for a few moments.
As they encounter again the snake, owl and fox, each runs in fear of the Gruffalo. But each time the mouse appears to demonstrate that it is in fact him they are running from, not the Gruffalo. Doubts form in the Gruffalo's mind (itself created by the mind of the mouse) and his confidence ebbs (as the mouse's grows).
Finally, in the greatest stanza in children's literature, the masterstroke.
"Well, Gruffalo," said the mouse. "You see? Everyone is afraid of me! But now my tummy's beginning to rumble. My favourite food is - gruffalo crumble!"
This teasing patronisation dispatches the Gruffalo with immediate effect. The mouse has won, against his worst enemies, and against his worst nightmare. From mortal danger he created something even more terrible, and then defeated his own demons with wit and confidence. What a journey!
There is no other children's book like this.
- I’m a designer and also a parent, when you start reading children’s books to your child you realise how many bad stories there are, they can be empty, with bad writing etc.
Once you find a good author you stick with them, perhaps back then there were less and so they took it upon themselves to create them. My favourite’designer’ book is little blue and little yellow by Leo Leoni (I think), it’s basic colour theory, so simple and easily conveyed.
I’d also recommend anything picture books by Julia Donaldson and Alex Schafer (the Gruffalo). They are great for 2/3+. My child is 11 now and refuses to donate them, she loves them so much.
- Thanks for mentioning Jon Klassen, I'll check it out. Our son absolutely loves busytown. We try to get most of our stuff second hand, the vast majority of books are terrible. And he knows. For at least 80 percent of the time, we are just re-reading busytown. And we have like 20 books or so that we might just as well get rid of.
Another one we really like is the Gruffalo, by Julia Donaldson. A classic, which is also really fun to read as an adult. I wish I know of more of these kinds of high quality children books.
Roald Dahl is another such writer who just doesn't care and writes what is fun for kids to read. I loved his books when I grew up. But its for a different age.
- Everything Octonauts - though I actually find the tv series better than the books.
Julia Donaldson books are great, such as The Gruffalo. Great art style and easy rhymes.
We’ve also had a lot of success with the various 5-minute collection books, such as 5-minute Winnie the Pooh stories. They love going from story to story.
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