By Julia Donaldson
A little mouse talks its way out of being eaten by inventing a monster — and then the monster turns out to be real.
A little mouse takes a walk through a deep dark wood, and one by one a fox, an owl, and a snake each look at that mouse and think, lunch. So the mouse invents a friend to scare them off: a Gruffalo, with terrible tusks and terrible claws and a poisonous wart on the end of its nose. It works every time. And then, on the very next page, the mouse walks straight into a real Gruffalo who fancies mouse for its own dinner. Now the mouse has to think fast all over again, and the way it wriggles out is the best part.
It gives a three- or four-year-old the thing they rarely get: the smallest character in the book is the smartest, and brains beat teeth every single time. The rhyme is so steady and satisfying that they can predict what comes next, which for this age is pure delight. And the twist in the middle, where the made-up monster turns out to be standing right there, lands like a proper surprise without ever tipping into truly frightening.