The Gruffalo and Other Stories - Julia Donaldson

...bought this box set from The Book People. Previously, his choices have been excellent. Not today.
Let's start at the beginning. This is a box set contains five books and a CD with the books being read by Imelda Staunton, Steven Pacey and Jim Carter. The books are big (24cm x 22cm), but thin (32 pages). Each one is written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

• The box is sturdy and illustrated all over. ...
...can see the CD and cut outs on the edge so that you can get the books out more easily. The picture is the same as that on the front of the book "The Gruffalo". The name of the box set and the author and illustrator's names are written along the spine.

The books:

• THE GRUFFALO

Described as "a modern classic" by the Observer newspaper this is the story of one mouse's walk through ... more

Very rarely am I so incensed by something that I am driven to write a review of it straight away. Normally I like to wait a while for my opinion to form itself in a more natural way. Not today.

My husband bought this box set from The Book People. Previously, his choices have been excellent. Not today.
Let's start at the beginning. This is a box set contains five books and a CD with the books being read by Imelda Staunton, Steven Pacey and Jim Carter. The books are big (24cm x 22cm), but thin (32 pages). Each one is written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler.

• The box is sturdy and illustrated all over. It has a hole in the front so that you can see the CD and cut outs on the edge so that you can get the books out more easily. The picture is the same as that on the front of the book "The Gruffalo". The name of the box set and the author and illustrator's names are written along the spine.

The books:

• THE GRUFFALO

Described as "a modern classic" by the Observer newspaper this is the story of one mouse's walk through the woods, and the lies he tells in order to not get eaten. The story is told in rhyme and is very repetitive, as many children's books are. On one double page the mouse encounters a predatory animal and tells them that they cannot eat him because he is going to meet the gruffalo. He then describes the gruffalo on the next double page and laughs when the predator runs away, because of course there is no such thing as a gruffalo. Predictably, he then meets a gruffalo and uses his murine wiles to again save himself from becoming dinner.

First published in 1999, it is now a virtual children's literature empire spawning sequels, songs, jigsaws and stage musicals wherever it goes.

I found the rhyming in this rather grating. The gruffalo has clearly been created based on the convenience of rhymes and large chunks of text are repeated: '"A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?" "A gruffalo! Why didn't you know?"' Oh God, please, no!

The illustrations are rather crude, and I would almost say, intentionally ugly. Their one saving grace is the background detail. In each picture there is always another prey animal looking sheepish in the background.

In summary, I would rather something had eaten this anthropomorphised mouse before the story happened.

• CHARLIE COOK'S FAVOURITE BOOK

This is a more recent addition to the set. First published in 2005, the Scotsman have this down as "a glorious celebration of books and reading". Pfffffffffffffffffff.

Charlie Cook likes to read and he has a favourite book. Each page then jumps to another story of someone reading a book, prompting another leap in story. This does seem like quite an appealing idea. At first it brought back memories of the Ahlbergs' works including rhyming and literary characters (The Jolly Postman and Each Peach Pear Plum). But this is a million miles from that level of sophistication. Even a two year old wouldn't be convinced that a knight would put off killing a dragon to read him something funny. There are also parts where some text has clearly been added in for rhyming's sake, letting continuity of story be damned:
"The cake was so delicious
that a famous spaceman took
A slice of it to Jupiter.
He also took a book."
It is less of a story and more of a circular, rhyming list.

Again the illustration is saved by the details. Each double page is in a different book and so has a different layout and style. There are also things to be spotted on the first page that refer to later parts of the book.

• MONKEY PUZZLE

This is my favourite of the five books, but perhaps you have guessed that that isn't saying much? Published in 2000, the monkey's puzzle is that he has lost his mum. He is helped to find her by a rather slow witted butterfly who asks for a description of the mother, each time making a daft suggestion of who it might be, and each time forgetting all previous descriptions. The salient message of this book is that different things are obvious from different perspectives. The butterfly does not assume that the monkey would look like his mother, because of course butterflies do not resemble their own young.

Disturbingly, the butterfly has a human head with antennae sticking out of it. Apart from that, the jungle scenes filling each page are nearly enough to distract from the stilted text.

• THE SMARTEST GIANT IN TOWN

This one is also alright. First published in 2002, it tells the story of a scruffy giant who buys some smart clothes and then promptly gives them away to some animals who are more in need of them than he is. He then goes back to being scruffy, via a song, but is then awarded a crown by the animals for being the kindest giant in town.

In this bizarre world, the illustrations really shine. The animals here are properly anthropomorphised - wearing clothes and living in houses, camping and using mobile phones. Again the beauty is in the detail. Each page contains a fantastic quantity of extra information that I, and children probably will, enjoy looking at and discovering new parts of.

But if you opened a shop selling giants clothes, wouldn't you make it big enough to fit a giant in?

• A SQUASH AND A SQUEEZE
This is the earliest book, published in 1993, and in fact it is Julia Donaldson's earliest book. In fact it started as a song. In fact it didn't really start as a song at all; it started as a Yiddish folk story. Or maybe it even started further back than that.

I think this is the point at which any chance of me liking Julia Donaldson's work went entirely out the window. This is a rather poor retelling of a story I have been familiar with for as long as I can remember. I know it as "It Could Always be Worse: A Yiddish Folk Tale" by Margot Zemach, but it comes in other formats as well: "A Big Quiet House: A Yiddish Folktale" by Heather Forest, for example. Now there is a chance that Donaldson came up with the story independently. But the wise man looks a little bit too much like a greying Rabbi Tuckman for me to believe that it is totally uninfluenced by this story and no mention is made of the story owing anything to anyone at any point.

Grumble grumble.

So it's zero points for originality and even zero points for interpretation as the story lacks spirit, soul and any character depth. The rhymes are again overbearing and annoying, and the illustrations do not have the detail or depth of Scheffler's later work.

• THE CD

The CD is stuck to the back of A Squash and a Squeeze which means that the last page is annoyingly stiff.

It contains five tracks.

1. The Gruffalo (12.57) [read by Imelda Staunton]
2. Monkey Puzzle (9.57) [read by Imelda Staunton]
3. Charlie Cook's Favourite Book (8.44) [read by Imelda Staunton and Steven Pacey]
4. A Squash and a Squeeze (8.06) [read by Imelda Staunton and Steven Pacey]
5. The Smartest Giant in Town (15.35) [read by Imelda Staunton and Jim Carter]

The incidental music is pretty good and each line is spaced out beyond belief, so this might last you for a car journey - unless you went crazy first. The voices are soft and familiar, but chances are they won't be familiar to your child. In case you need a reminder:

Imelda Staunton has been in just about everything ever made in Britain, including Peter's Friends, Sense and Sensibility, Vera Drake and most relevantly to children Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Oh, and she was in an episode of Midsomer Murders, but wasn't everyone?

Steven Pacey has been in just about every TV series made in Britain - Blakes 7, Lovejoy, Heartbeat, Spooks and of course Doctors.

Jim Carter has been in just about every well thought of British drama ever - Black Beauty, Cracker, Brassed Off, Shakespeare in Love, Silent Witness and Cranford. Oh and Dinotopia.

So, impressive cast, wild horses couldn't make me listen to it all the way through.

Conclusions:

Everyone else in the world seems to love these books. They have won awards - proper ones like the Smarties prize - and everyone else on Ciao seems to rate them very highly. Children may well love these, but I for one could not bear to read them any more than a few times. These fall easily into the category of "oh no, not again" which any parent will be familiar with - for me.

I think the most telling thing is that after the wrapping was off this box, my daughter lost interest and began pointing out to me the medal on the front of "That Pesky Rat" by Lauren Child.

Right, I have had a night to sleep on it, and my vitriol has died down somewhat. I have realised that I didn't mention the price - only £6.99 for five books and a CD - which is excellent value. My husband has also read the book of The Gruffalo now and has commented: 'It's fine. It's the right length for a bedtime story.' A pithy comment indeed.

But I am still of the same opinion about these books. They may be well loved by many, and great for the under fives learning to read, but natural variation in opinion means that someone wouldn't like then, and it's me. There are plenty of children's books that I love, both old and new, and perhaps I will stick to reading them, to avoid giving myself an ulcer. 

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