“It has tremendous fangs, sharp claws and wet slime monster teethIs the Gruffalo coming back? Yes, but now we also know his friendly grandmother! And for those who have read those words dozens, perhaps hundreds of times before turning off the bedroom light, the news has something wonderfully familiar.
Because there are children’s books that, almost without realizing it, end up accompanying us adults too. And the Gruffalo definitely belongs to this category. More than twenty years have passed since then Julia Donaldson And Axel Scheffler they took us into the leafy forest for the last time. Now that path starts again right where we left off, but with a new member of the family ready to mess things up: Grandma Gruffalo.
The new album, published in Italy by Emme Edizioni on 15 September 2026 in the translation of Laura Pelaschiaris the third installment of the series that began in 1999 with The Gruffalo and continued in 2004 with Gruffalo and his little girl.
And let’s face it: twenty-two years of waiting to meet a grandmother is a long time. But perhaps precisely for this reason his arrival has the flavor of those returns that we no longer thought possible…
We finally meet Grandma Gruffalo
The forest is always the same. There are the Fox, the Owl, the Snake and of course him, the very small Mouse who for more than a quarter of a century has demonstrated a fundamental thing: to get by you don’t need to be the biggest, you just need a fair amount of imagination.
But this time a very special guest is about to arrive at the Gruffalò house: the grandmother and, as happens in the best families, her arrival means above all that we need to prepare something good and delicious for her. From here the new adventure begins. The Gruffalo and his little girl have to organize the welcome lunch and, needless to say, in the woods someone immediately risks turning from a guest into a menu. That someone is once again the Mouse, who will have to rely on his proverbial cunning to avoid ending up on the plate.
Donaldson thus returns to play with the formula that made the first Gruffalo irresistible: the contrast between those who appear enormous, scary and very strong and those who, on the other hand, seem tiny and defenseless but manage to overturn the situation using their head. Except now there’s a grandmother involved and we know well that, with grandmothers, the rules can change very quickly.
Grandma Gruffalò is a 40-page illustrated book, recommended for ages 3 and up and designed, once again, above all to be read aloud. And this is perhaps one of the most beautiful secrets of the universe created by Donaldson and Scheffler: their stories don’t simply ask to be read. They ask to be saidrepeated, interpreted.
Twenty years later, why return now?
In reality, Julia Donaldson was in no hurry to write a third chapter. Indeed, the author said that writing a sequel always represents a challenge and that, afterwards Gruffalo and his little girlthe idea of returning to the woods once again remained in the back burner for a long time.
What also convinced her was the work of National Literacy Trust and, in particular, the program Early Words Matterwhich uses books and stories to support the development of language and reading in the early years of life.
Writing a sequel is always a challenge – said Donaldson, explaining that she only made up her mind after seeing the first two books used in the program. At that point he took up that pending idea to see if it could really become a new Gruffalo story.
And apparently Axel Scheffler didn’t have many doubts when he found the new text in front of him. The two have worked together for over thirty years and now their imagination is almost inseparable: it is difficult to think of Donaldson’s rhymes without immediately seeing the colours, the huge eyes and the funny creatures drawn by Scheffler appear.
It is no coincidence that, when the new story arrived, the illustrator essentially said that he couldn’t say no. A return that will also have a solidarity dimension: the characters will be involved in initiatives supported by the National Literacy Trust to bring more and more children closer to reading.
The Gruffalo, the tender monster who grew up together with us
The numbers, looking at them today, are impressive. The first two chapters of the series alone have reached a total of 18.2 million copies and have been translated into 116 languages and dialects.
But perhaps they only tell part of the story. The Gruffalo is one of those characters who have long since crossed the boundaries of the picture book. It entered schools, theaters, cartoons, libraries and above all homes. It passed from the hands of children in the late 1990s to those of their younger brothers, cousins and, now, in some cases even their children. And it is curious to think that a monster born to scare has become one of the most reassuring presences of contemporary childhood.
Perhaps because the real protagonist, in the end, has never really been the Gruffalo, but also that tiny Mouse who crosses the woods without muscles, without claws and without fangs, but with an extraordinary ability to invent a way out. And, behind the rhymes, the funny animals and the furry monsters, for decades there has continued to be that small, gigantic lesson: the strongest is not always the one who scares the most.
