The book takes the reader on a journey with mouse as he strolls through the wood where he meets a fox, an owl and a snake, who all want to eat him. So, the mouse invents a gruffalo - a monster with terrible tusks, and terrible teeth and terrible jaw and one that spots a poisonous wart on his nose. Little did he know that the Gruffalo exists and as the mouse revisits inhabitants of the wood with the Gruffalo, the mouse successfully convinces the beast that he, the mouse, is the scariest creature in the wood.
A little poetic, and little rhymy, I actually quite like the light humour in it. However, when I first read it (in about 2 minutes flat!), I was quite sure that it will be a few more years before Spud shows some interest in the book. I figured this might be something a little bit too much for a one year old child now, especially when you take the number of words in this book into account (700 of 'em words apparently!).
I certainly would not have thought for a second that Spud would be interested in "sophisticated" books just yet given her very short attention span, but strangely enough, this is certainly one book which she cannot get enough of.
Since last weekend, she has been handing us The Gruffalo up to 5x-7x a day, asking us to read to her again and again and again. She has yet to last sitting through the entire book, but she certainly lasted about 6 pages (at minimum) of being read to before she takes off again!
She certainly recognises The Gruffalo, for when we ask her about it, she will straight away take off to find the book and hand it to us!
I cannot figure out what is it about this book that she is so enthralled with, but I am amazed that out of the many books she has, this is the one and only book she is most interested in. I would have thought the monster looking thing would probably scare the crap out of her, but funnily enough, she actually smiles quite a bit at the illustrations. It goes without saying that The Gruffalo is now her favourite book and I hope that it will last long given the trashing Spud gives the book sometimes.
Reading this book to Spud reminds me of Little Dude Baby. Unfortunately, Little Dude Baby and family have all relocated to Amsterdam not too long ago...which means, one less play date for Spud and for us, a bummer since we now have one less cool and normal family to chill out with when we have sometime over the weekends.
We certainly miss them, and we hope that they are settling in well in The Netherlands and getting used to the crappy Dutch weather.
I am actually really glad that Spud likes the book, and I hope one of these days, she will be able to sit through the entire reading session. It also goes without saying that if this continues on, there will probably comes a time where we can actually memorise the book, and able to read it with our eyes closed!
Our next mission here on:
Try to get our hands on The Gruffalo soft toy. (Silver Bullet's idea, not mine)
Come to think of it, Gruffalo is actually kind of cute!
2 comments:
I also want! :D
the toy or the book?
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