How “The Gruffalo” went global

When Julia Donaldson set out to write a children’s book featuring a mouse—who would take a stroll through “the deep dark wood”, fending off a series of predators with wit and cunning—she intended him to meet a tiger for tea. Ms Donaldson, a British author who wrote songs for children’s television, had been inspired by a Chinese fable about a girl who escapes death by convincing a tiger that she is the queen of the forest. But there was a problem: Ms Donaldson wanted the book to be in rhyming couplets, and not a lot rhymes with tiger. She decided it would be more pragmatic for the beast’s name to end with the sound “oh”. And so, with the help of Axel Scheffler, a German illustrator, one of the most lucrative monsters in children’s publishing was born.

“The Gruffalo”, which was published 25 years ago in March, has achieved such great success that tired parents everywhere have considered jacking in their boring jobs to write children’s books. To date it has sold 11.6m copies worldwide, according to the publisher. Last year Ms Donaldson’s whole oeuvre—now 200 books and counting—brought in £15.6m ($19.6m) in sales, with “The Gruffalo” leading the pack.