The Gruffalo’s Child

One wild and windy night the Gruffalo’s child ignores her father’s warnings about the Big Bad Mouse and tiptoes out into the snow. En route she meets the same fox, owl and snake that her father met some years before. Each points her in a different direction, so by the time the little Gruffalo gets to the heart of the wood, she is beginning to have serious doubts about the scary mouse that her dad has told her about. Just about to give up and go home, she sees a little mouse and decides to stop for a mousey snack. But Mouse is not in the mood to be eaten and comes up with an ingenious plan to scare the little Gruffalo away. Standing on a twig as the moon shines, Mouse casts a big bad mousey shadow on the ground – and this is enough to send the Gruffalo’s Child running home…

The production combines Tall Stories’ unique physical storytelling style with new songs, humour and a touch of magic. In addition, puppetry is used to help create the sense of the size of the Gruffalo next to his child as well as to illustrate the scary mouse that the Gruffalo’s child thinks she has seen… For the majority of the show, a narrator (who later becomes Mouse) leads us through the tale.

The Gruffalo’s Child is an adaptation of the picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. It is the sequel to The Gruffalo (‘a modern classic’ The Observer), the picture book which won the Smarties Book Prize Gold Award and the Blue Peter Award for Best Book to Read Aloud. The Gruffalo has been the best-selling children’s book in the UK for five years running.