Gruffalo Granny is the third book in the Gruffalo series by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, published by Macmillan Children’s Books on 10 September 2026 — the first new Gruffalo story in over 22 years, following the original The Gruffalo (1999) and The Gruffalo’s Child (2004), and introducing a brand-new character: the Gruffalo’s mother, who comes to stay with her son and granddaughter in the deep dark wood. The opening line of the book sets the scene immediately: “The Gruffalo said to his daughter one day, ‘Your Gruffalo Granny is coming to stay.'” The new Granny has grey fur and red prickles (compared to the Gruffalo’s distinctive purple prickles), green eyes (compared to his orange eyes), and carries a walking stick and a knapsack. The book was announced on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 6 February 2026 and the first illustration of Gruffalo Granny was revealed that evening in a spectacular projection on the side of the British Library in London, where Donaldson also read the first two stories to assembled schoolchildren.
In this complete guide to Gruffalo Granny, you will discover everything known about the upcoming book: how the idea came about and why it took over 20 years to appear, the involvement of Axel Scheffler and his reaction to the new story, what the Gruffalo Granny character looks like and what we know of the plot, the extraordinary history of the Gruffalo series leading up to this point, the National Year of Reading campaign that helped inspire the book’s creation, how to pre-order, UK price, the publishing timeline, and a comprehensive FAQ section answering every question fans are asking.
What Is Gruffalo Granny?
The Third Gruffalo Book in 27 Years
Gruffalo Granny is the latest book by award-winning children’s author Julia Donaldson — the third instalment in the Gruffalo series, coming almost three decades since The Gruffalo was first published in 1999 and more than two decades since the follow-up, The Gruffalo’s Child, hit bookshelves in 2004. The gap between the second and third books — 22 years — is extraordinary by the standards of children’s publishing, where successful series are typically extended rapidly to capitalise on demand. The Gruffalo Granny announcement was therefore genuinely newsworthy: not merely an anticipated sequel but a genuinely unexpected return to a world that many assumed was closed.
The new story, publishing in hardback and audio book on 10 September 2026, returns readers to the deep dark wood — meeting Gruffalo Granny as she visits the Gruffalo family. The book features all the hallmarks of the series: Julia Donaldson’s trademark rhythmic rhyming text, Axel Scheffler’s iconic illustrations, the return of much-loved characters from the previous two books, and — for the first time in the series — a grandmother as the central new character.
The first image of the Granny was revealed on Friday evening in a projection on the side of the British Library in London, after Donaldson read the first two stories to assembled schoolchildren. The image shows the Granny has grey fur, with red prickles on her back, in contrast to the Gruffalo’s famous purple prickles. She also has green eyes, compared with the Gruffalo’s orange eyes, and is carrying a walking stick and a knapsack. These specific visual differentiators — grey fur instead of brown, red prickles instead of purple, green eyes instead of orange, walking stick and knapsack as identifying props — are the deliberate design choices that make Gruffalo Granny immediately distinguishable as a distinct character while remaining unmistakably part of the Gruffalo family.
The Story’s Opening Line
The book opens with: “The Gruffalo said to his daughter one day, ‘Your Gruffalo Granny is coming to stay.'” This simple opening couplet is Donaldson’s trademark technique at its most efficient: establishing the situation, introducing the new character by name, setting up the dynamic between the Gruffalo and his daughter, and setting the story in motion — all in a single rhyming line. It immediately invites a child to ask: what is the Gruffalo Granny like? What will happen when she arrives? Will she be scary like the Gruffalo? Will she be clever like the Mouse? The question is perfectly calibrated to drive a child’s engagement with what follows.
This fresh and exciting new Gruffalo adventure features the return of much-loved characters and is destined to become a classic. Readers will be reacquainted with much-loved characters from both The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child including Fox, Snake, Owl and of course, the clever mouse. The return of the full cast — the deep dark wood creatures who have featured across both previous books — gives the story a family reunion quality, bringing back familiar faces in a new context while introducing the Granny as the fresh presence around whom the new story is built.
How Gruffalo Granny Came to Be
An Idea Left in the Cupboard
The news that Donaldson would be revisiting the character was first announced in April 2025, when she said she was spurred on to write by a campaign to reverse a decline in children’s reading. But the genesis of the idea predates even that announcement by a considerable period. Explaining the long gap between the second and third books, she said: “I did think about a Gruffalo Granny a long time ago. In fact I often said to people if I ever did a book it would be about a Gruffalo Granny because it sounds good, Gr Gr, but then I was just so busy doing other things.”
The sound logic alone — Gruffalo Granny — two G’s, the growling alliterative repetition of the consonant cluster that had made “Gruffalo” and “Gruffalo’s Child” so euphonious — had clearly been in Donaldson’s mind for some time. The double Gr is almost onomatopoeic, suggesting something both fearsome and funny, which is precisely the emotional register of the Gruffalo series. Donaldson revealed that the idea had been sitting quietly “in the cupboard” for years, until her son encouraged her to bring it to life.
Donaldson wrote: “Five years elapsed between publication of The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child, and now it will be more than 20 between The Gruffalo’s Child and the third book. I actually had the basic idea for the story a long time ago, but couldn’t think how to develop it. It was only when the National Literacy Trust, whose work I’m very impressed by, used the first two books as part of their Early Words Matter programme that I was spurred on to get my idea out of the cupboard and see once and for all if I could turn it into a really satisfying story. To my surprise, I managed to do just that!”
The National Literacy Trust Connection
The National Literacy Trust used the first two books as part of their Early Words Matter programme — and this specific connection to a national literacy campaign is central to understanding why Gruffalo Granny is more than just a commercial publishing event. A national campaign to address falling reading levels among young children also helped prompt the celebrated author to pick up her pen again, and her own experience of grandmotherhood was also a factor.
The broader context is important: UK children’s reading levels have been a cause of sustained national concern in recent years, with data from the Department for Education and organisations including the National Literacy Trust consistently showing declines in children’s reading frequency and pleasure. Macmillan’s managing director Alison Ruane said: “The impact that Julia Donaldson, Axel Scheffler and The Gruffalo have had on families around the world cannot be underestimated, the sheer amount of global excitement following the announcement of the new book has been evidence of this. We are so proud to publish Julia and Axel here at Macmillan’s Children’s Books, and we can’t wait for children and families to experience this new story together, especially in the National Year of Reading. Get ready for this September, Granny is coming to stay.”
The explicit reference to the “National Year of Reading” situates the Gruffalo Granny publication within a national literacy initiative — positioning the book as not merely a commercial product but as a cultural intervention in service of children’s reading.
Julia Donaldson’s Personal Motivation
Donaldson said: “I really enjoy being a granny myself, I’ve got nine grandchildren and I’ve got very good memories of my own granny, who read me stories. She lived upstairs in our house and she read me Edward Lear and Alice In Wonderland and things like that so I’m a big fan of grandmotherhood.” This personal motivation — being a grandmother of nine who values intergenerational reading — adds an authenticity to the choice of a grandmother as the central new character that goes beyond narrative convenience. Donaldson is not writing about grandmothers from the outside; she is writing as a grandmother, with the specific warmth and specificity that lived experience brings to creative work.
The connection between the story’s theme — a grandmother coming to stay — and Donaldson’s own experience of grandmotherhood is direct. The intergenerational reading that defines the Gruffalo series’ primary use case (adults reading to children at bedtime) is itself mirrored in the author’s own childhood memory of her grandmother reading to her. The book is, in this light, a deeply personal tribute to the particular bond between grandparents and grandchildren that reading creates.
Axel Scheffler’s Return: The Illustrator’s Perspective
Impossible to Resist
Axel Scheffler’s involvement in Gruffalo Granny was not guaranteed. Both Donaldson and various media reports had noted that Scheffler had previously been reluctant to return to the Gruffalo world — suggesting he felt the story had been told and that a third instalment was not necessary. His eventual agreement to illustrate Gruffalo Granny was therefore one of the most eagerly anticipated confirmations in the book’s journey from idea to publication.
Despite previously insisting there would never be another Gruffalo story, illustrator Axel Scheffler is once again on board, describing the project as impossible to resist. His own words capture the combination of surprise and inevitability that characterised his response to Donaldson’s new text: Scheffler said: “One day out of the blue there came a wonderfully clever and inspired new text by Julia. How does she do this? Could I decline? Of course not! As I have had to draw the odd Gruffalo and his daughter over the last 20 years, I’m not completely out of practice.”
The wry humour in Scheffler’s comment — “the odd Gruffalo” referring to the vast commercial output of Gruffalo merchandise and branded materials he has produced across two decades — signals both his self-awareness about the Gruffalo franchise and his genuine affection for the characters. The acknowledgement that he is “not completely out of practice” is an understatement from an artist who has been drawing the Gruffalo on a commercial basis for nearly 30 years.
Designing Gruffalo Granny
Donaldson revealed that she and Scheffler did not have any conversations about how she wanted Gruffalo Granny to look but added: “He just had the text but I think when he did the first picture I thought she looked a bit too like the Gruffalo so I suggested she had different coloured eyes, so she’s got green eyes.”
This small creative exchange — Donaldson’s suggestion that green eyes would differentiate the Granny from the Gruffalo himself (who has orange eyes) — is a fascinating window into the collaborative process between author and illustrator. Scheffler’s initial instinct was apparently to draw the Granny as visually similar to her son; Donaldson’s instinct was to give her enough visual distinction to register immediately as a separate character in the mind of a child looking at the page. The final design — grey fur, red prickles, green eyes, walking stick, knapsack — is the result of this dialogue.
The visual design of Gruffalo Granny follows the logic of the series: each new character in the Gruffalo world shares the species’ core characteristics (fur, prickles, facial features) while having distinguishing attributes that allow children to identify them. The Gruffalo is brown with purple prickles and orange eyes; the Gruffalo’s Child was depicted as smaller, slightly paler, with the same basic design; Gruffalo Granny is grey with red prickles and green eyes — a clear generational palette progression from the warm browns and purples of the Gruffalo himself to the cooler, more subdued tones of an older creature.
The Gruffalo Series: Context and History
The Original Gruffalo (1999)
Understanding Gruffalo Granny requires understanding the extraordinary cultural phenomenon it is joining. The Gruffalo was first released 27 years ago in 1999 and came first in a list of children’s favourite books by British charity Booktime in 2010. The book tells the story of a clever Mouse who walks through the deep dark wood, using the fiction of an imaginary creature — the Gruffalo — to frighten away potential predators (Fox, Owl, and Snake), only to encounter the actual Gruffalo himself and then use her reputation as the most dangerous creature in the wood to frighten him away.
The book is a masterclass in simple storytelling: approximately 700 words, rhyming couplets with a repetitive structure that allows children to anticipate and join in, a protagonist who wins through wit rather than force, and a story that works differently depending on the age of the child reading it. Children aged 3–5 enjoy the surprise and repetition; children aged 6–8 begin to appreciate the irony and the Mouse’s clever manipulation of both the predators and the Gruffalo. The book rewards rereading in a way that few picture books achieve, which is a fundamental reason for its endurance.
The Gruffalo was first published in 1999 in Britain by Macmillan Children’s Books. It is about 700 words long and is written in rhyming couplets featuring repetitive verse. The book has sold over 13.5 million copies and has won several prizes for children’s literature, including the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize.
The origin of the Gruffalo’s name has been explained by Donaldson in detail. She has written: “I thought the word had to have three syllables, and end in ‘o’, and would sound fierce with ‘gr’ at the beginning, so gruffalo came.” The sonic engineering behind the name — the hard G, the growling R, the guttural UFF, the trailing O — is typical of Donaldson’s meticulous attention to the musicality of language, which is as carefully considered as the narrative structure.
The Gruffalo’s Child (2004)
The Gruffalo’s Child followed five years after the original in 2004, shifting the protagonist from Mouse to the Gruffalo’s unnamed daughter, who ventures out into the snowy deep dark wood against her father’s warnings, seeking the “Big Bad Mouse” that he has told her is the most dangerous creature in the wood. The sequel inverts several of the original’s dynamics: where the original is set in autumnal woodland, the sequel is set in winter snow; where the original gives us Mouse as the active trickster, the sequel gives us the Gruffalo’s Child as the curious naif who is herself tricked; and where the original ends with the Gruffalo defeated, the sequel ends with the Gruffalo’s Child safely home after her encounter with Mouse’s shadow.
The Gruffalo was first published on 23 March 1999 and The Gruffalo’s Child on September 3 2004. Combined sales are 18.2 million and the books have sold in 115 languages and dialects. These figures — 18.2 million copies across two books, 115 languages and dialects — situate the Gruffalo series among the most successful British children’s picture books ever published. The only British picture books that approach this level of global penetration are from a very short list: Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea, Eric Carle (though American), the Mr Men series, and a handful of others.
The BBC Animations
An animated adaptation of The Gruffalo aired on BBC One on Christmas Day 2009 — and pulled in a whopping almost 10 million viewers. Famous names like Robbie Coltrane, Rob Brydon, James Corden, and Helena Bonham Carter were called in to voice the parts of The Gruffalo, Snake, Mouse, and Mother Squirrel (narrator) respectively. It was then followed up with an animated adaptation of the sequel, The Gruffalo’s Child — which aired on Christmas Day two years later in 2011.
The BBC Christmas Day broadcast of The Gruffalo in 2009 is one of the most watched animated adaptations of a British children’s book in television history — nearly 10 million viewers representing a cultural saturation that effectively introduced the story to an entire generation of children simultaneously. The combination of the Gruffalo story, top-tier cast including Oscar-winner Helena Bonham Carter as narrator, and the Christmas Day scheduling created a cultural event rather than merely a television programme. It is this broadcast, as much as the book itself, that has made the Gruffalo a universal reference point in British cultural life for families with children born after 2009.
Julia Donaldson: Author of the Deep Dark Wood
Career and Background
Julia Donaldson is one of the most successful British children’s authors of the last 30 years — a writer whose combination of linguistic musicality, narrative economy, and emotional intelligence has produced a body of work that has sold hundreds of millions of copies worldwide. Julia Donaldson is an author of children’s books, the most famous of which is The Gruffalo. Before writing The Gruffalo, Donaldson had a background in drama and performance. She studied drama at the University of Bristol and then busked in Europe and the United States. She began her career as a writer by writing children’s songs for television programmes.
In 1993, one of her songs that she sang and performed with her husband — “A Squash and Squeeze”, about an elderly lady with a small house — was turned into a book, published by Methuen and illustrated by Axel Scheffler. This 1993 book — Donaldson and Scheffler’s first collaboration — established the partnership that would go on to produce The Gruffalo, The Gruffalo’s Child, Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale, Stick Man, Tiddler, The Scarecrows’ Wedding, The Highway Rat, and many others. It is one of the most successful author-illustrator partnerships in the history of children’s publishing.
Julia Donaldson is one of today’s best-loved children’s authors. She was the UK Children’s Laureate 2011–2013 and has written more than 100 books for children, including the international bestsellers The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom. The Children’s Laureateship is awarded every two years to a writer or illustrator who has made an outstanding contribution to children’s literature, and Donaldson’s tenure from 2011 to 2013 reflected her extraordinary impact on children’s reading in the UK. During her tenure she was particularly active in visiting schools and libraries, advocating for children’s reading, and championing the role of public libraries in children’s literacy.
Her Own Grandmotherhood
She said: “I really enjoy being a granny myself, I’ve got nine grandchildren.” This biographical fact — nine grandchildren — directly connects to the theme of Gruffalo Granny and to the National Year of Reading campaign that helped inspire the book. A grandmother of nine who is also Britain’s most beloved children’s author is uniquely positioned to write about the experience of a grandmother coming to stay with family: she has personal experience of both sides of this dynamic, as a grandmother to her own grandchildren and as a writer who has spent three decades understanding how stories work for young children.
Donaldson’s own family reading history — her grandmother reading Edward Lear and Alice in Wonderland to her from the upstairs flat of the family home — is itself the kind of intergenerational reading experience that the Gruffalo books are most often used for. The series has its roots in Donaldson’s own experience of hearing stories read aloud, and in her career as a songwriter and performer who understood rhythm, repetition, and the physical pleasure of language delivered well. Gruffalo Granny is therefore a deeply personal project: a grandmother writing about a grandmother, drawing on the best of her own family reading memories, at a moment when national reading levels demand exactly the kind of accessible, joyful, shared-reading book that the Gruffalo series has always been.
Axel Scheffler: The Artist Behind the Gruffalo
A Career-Defining Partnership
Axel Scheffler is best known for his partnership with Julia Donaldson, on books including Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo. Axel has also illustrated a number of other highly successful titles, including the Pip and Posy series, The Grunts, and the bestselling Flip Flap series. Axel lives in London with his partner and young daughter.
Scheffler was born and grew up in Germany before moving to Britain to study art. He first worked with Donaldson on A Squash and Squeeze, published in 1993. The 30-year partnership between Donaldson and Scheffler is one of the longest and most productive in British children’s publishing. While both have worked with other collaborators — Donaldson with various illustrators and Scheffler with various authors — it is their partnership that has produced the most enduring and commercially successful work for both of them.
Scheffler’s visual style is immediately recognisable: detailed, warm, character-filled, with a strong sense of personality in every face and figure, and a particular gift for rendering animals as both convincingly animal and warmly human. The Gruffalo himself — “a terrible creature with terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws” — is, in Scheffler’s rendering, both genuinely frightening and somehow cuddly: the tension between the Gruffalo’s described terribleness and his visual warmth is itself one of the sources of the book’s humour. Donaldson has described the character as “a mixture of scary but stupid.”
Scheffler has also illustrated for many charities and designed the Royal Mail Christmas stamps in 2012. Born in Hamburg, Axel now lives with his family in London. The Royal Mail Christmas stamps are a mark of cultural recognition that places Scheffler among Britain’s most celebrated illustrators — commissioned to represent the nation’s most widely distributed annual cultural artefact.
Gruffalo Granny and the National Year of Reading
Reading Levels and the Campaign
The National Year of Reading is a UK-wide initiative aimed at reversing declining reading levels among children and adults. The context in which Gruffalo Granny was announced — explicitly connected by Donaldson herself to the National Literacy Trust’s Early Words Matter programme and to the National Year of Reading — positions it as a cultural event with national significance beyond commercial publishing.
The UK children’s reading crisis has been documented extensively: the Department for Education’s National Literacy Trust data shows that the proportion of children who say they enjoy reading in their free time has been declining for several years, with pandemic disruptions to school attendance and library access accelerating trends that were already concerning. Books that capture children’s imaginations and create the desire to read — rather than merely providing reading practice — are essential tools in reversing this decline.
The Gruffalo series is among the most powerful tools available for this purpose. Its linguistic accessibility (simple vocabulary, strong rhythm, predictable structure), its narrative engagement (witty plot, satisfying resolution, memorable characters), and its cultural currency (almost every British family with young children knows the books) make it an almost uniquely effective reading-engagement vehicle. Gruffalo Granny’s arrival in the National Year of Reading is therefore both practically timely and symbolically powerful: the Gruffalo bringing a new family member to the deep dark wood in the same year that the nation is trying to bring children back to reading.
Pre-Ordering and Where to Buy
How to Pre-Order Gruffalo Granny
Gruffalo Granny is published in hardback and audio book on 10 September 2026. Pre-orders are already being accepted across multiple retailers, with most bookshops — both independent and chain — listing the book for pre-order.
ISBN: 9781035065516 (hardback)
Where to pre-order:
Amazon UK (amazon.co.uk) — available for pre-order at standard picture book pricing, typically £7–10 for a picture book hardback
Waterstones — standard hardback pre-order available
WHSmith — available for pre-order
Independent bookshops — many independent children’s bookshops are offering signed first editions or exclusive editions; the Ivybridge Bookshop and Hungerford Bookshop are among those listed
Independent bookshop exclusive editions: Several independent bookshops are advertising exclusive sprayed-edge or signed editions of Gruffalo Granny alongside the standard hardback, continuing the trend for limited editions at indie bookshops that has grown significantly in recent years. Collectors and Gruffalo enthusiasts should check with their local independent bookshop for any special edition offer.
Audiobook: The audiobook edition is published simultaneously on 10 September 2026, consistent with the approach taken for the Gruffalo series’ previous audio releases.
Expected Price
Based on current pricing for comparable Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler picture books in hardback, Gruffalo Granny is expected to retail at approximately £12.99 in hardback, with typical online discounts bringing the price to £8–10. The audiobook is expected to follow similar pricing patterns for the format.
Practical Information: Getting the Book
UK Publication Date
The new children’s story will be published on 10 September 2026, Macmillan has announced. This date — the beginning of September — places the book’s UK publication at the start of the school year, a strategically ideal moment for a children’s book that will be used in schools, libraries, and family reading routines. Back-to-school timing is among the most commercially effective for children’s publishing, when families are thinking about books for the term ahead and when teachers are planning classroom reading activities.
For context: The Gruffalo was first published on 23 March 1999 and The Gruffalo’s Child on September 3 2004. The Gruffalo’s Child was also published in September — making September a traditional month for new Gruffalo publications, and reinforcing the sense of a deliberate and considered publishing strategy for this third book.
International Availability
The announcement of Gruffalo Granny was coordinated with international publishers, with Donaldson noting: “That’s one of the reasons we revealed it [the image], because there are so many foreign publishers, so many people know about it.” Donaldson has written more than 100 books for children, including the international bestsellers The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom. Given that the previous two Gruffalo books have sold in 115 languages and dialects, Gruffalo Granny is expected to be published internationally across all major markets simultaneously or shortly after the UK date.
In the US, the book is being published by Penguin Random House with an ISBN of 9798217238736. Canadian pre-orders are being taken by specialist children’s bookshops. European, Australian, and Asian editions will follow the respective publisher arrangements within each territory.
Where to Find the Books
Gruffalo Granny will be available from:
All major UK bookshops (Waterstones, WHSmith, Blackwells)
Amazon UK (amazon.co.uk) for online purchase and pre-order
Independent bookshops — recommended for signed editions and specialist children’s booksellers
Libraries — the book is expected to be ordered rapidly by school and public libraries given its significance to the National Year of Reading campaign
Macmillan Children’s Books online (panmacmillan.com)
What to Expect from the Book
The Gruffalo Formula Applied to Granny
Every Donaldson-Scheffler Gruffalo book follows a recognisable structural template: a new character is introduced to the deep dark wood, encounters with familiar woodland characters ensue, trickery (typically by the clever Mouse) plays a central role, and the story resolves with the new character safely situated within the Gruffalo family’s world. Gruffalo Granny’s structure, based on the limited information available before publication, appears to follow this template while adding the specific emotional register of a grandparent’s visit.
The returning cast — Fox, Snake, Owl, and Mouse — ensures that familiar pleasures are built into the new story from the outset. Children who know the original books will experience the pleasure of recognition when they encounter these characters again, while newcomers to the series will encounter them for the first time. This dual accessibility — rewarding existing fans while welcoming new readers — is one of the Gruffalo series’ most commercially important qualities, and it seems deliberately maintained in Gruffalo Granny’s design.
The presence of the walking stick and knapsack in Gruffalo Granny’s character design are both visually distinctive and narratively suggestive: the walking stick implies a journey completed and possibly some physical frailty (though the Granny may be considerably more formidable than she appears), and the knapsack implies that she is arriving from somewhere else, bearing gifts or provisions. These details, visible in the single illustration released before publication, already invite narrative speculation — what is in the knapsack? where has Gruffalo Granny come from? — that is precisely the kind of pre-reading engagement that Donaldson’s characterisation typically encourages.
The Book’s Cultural Significance
What matters is that a grandmother, so often marginalised or ridiculed in popular culture and rarely granted main-character energy, is taking centre stage in Gruffalo Granny. It gives hope that this mirrors a wider shift in attitudes: that being an older woman no longer automatically means being sidelined or underserved, but finally having stories told and perspectives treated as worthy of attention.
This cultural dimension — the granting of main-character status to a grandmother figure — is frequently noted in commentary on the book’s announcement. Children’s picture books are cultural artefacts that shape how children understand the world: who the heroes are, which characteristics are valued, which figures have narrative agency. The Gruffalo series has always featured a clever small creature (Mouse) triumphing through intelligence over larger, less clever adversaries — a fundamentally democratic and child-empowering narrative structure. Adding a grandmother as the newest and most powerful member of the family extends this logic into intergenerational territory.
The Gruffalo in British Culture
A National Institution
The Gruffalo has achieved a level of cultural penetration in the UK that places it alongside very few other children’s books as a shared national reference point. The combination of a book with extraordinary staying power, a BBC Christmas Day animation that reached 10 million viewers, and a series of woodland trail experiences in National Trust and Forestry England properties that have allowed families to physically walk through the Gruffalo’s world has created a multi-decade, multi-platform cultural phenomenon. The Gruffalo is not merely a book: it is a piece of shared childhood that a significant proportion of British people under 40 have experienced — either as a child being read to, as a parent reading to a child, or as a teacher using the books in a classroom.
The woodland trails — Gruffalo trails at National Trust, Forestry England, and various wildlife trust properties — are one of the most publicly engaged manifestations of this cultural status. Hundreds of trails have been installed across England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, placing Gruffalo character posts in woodland environments that families can visit and follow on dedicated trail maps. The experience of looking for the Mouse, the Fox, the Owl, and the Gruffalo himself while walking through actual woodland has introduced children to both the books and to the pleasure of outdoor exploration in a single integrated experience. Gruffalo Granny’s arrival may reasonably prompt expectations of new Granny-themed trail additions across the network.
The Gruffalo theme park ride at Chessington World of Adventures — “The Gruffalo River Ride Adventure” — is another physical manifestation of the series’ cultural reach. Opened in 2015 and consistently ranked as one of the resort’s most popular attractions for younger visitors, the ride takes families through scenes from the book in a log-flume format, encountering all the key characters along the route. The ride’s success demonstrates that Gruffalo characters have achieved the kind of recognisability that allows theme park experiences to make sense — the children on the ride already know and love the characters before boarding.
The Gruffalo on Stage
Televised animations of Donaldson and Scheffler’s best-loved stories have become a staple of the festive calendar and many of their books have also been adapted for the stage. The Gruffalo stage adaptation — produced by Tall Stories Theatre Company — is one of the longest-running children’s theatre productions in the UK, having toured continuously since its creation in 2004 (the same year as The Gruffalo’s Child’s publication). The stage show has been performed thousands of times across the UK and internationally, introducing the characters to live theatre audiences in a format that differs meaningfully from both the book and the animation.
The Gruffalo stage show’s longevity reflects the consistent demand from families who want to experience the story in different formats — and the theatrical medium’s specific pleasures (live performance, physical presence, the immediacy of performance) that the book and animation cannot replicate. It is reasonable to expect that a Gruffalo Granny stage adaptation will be developed and staged in the period following the book’s September 2026 publication, continuing the tradition of theatrical adaptation that has been central to the franchise’s reach.
The BBC Christmas Day Tradition
The Gruffalo animated film’s 9.8 million viewers on Christmas Day 2009 places it among the highest-rated programmes in the history of the BBC Christmas schedule — a remarkable achievement for an animation aimed primarily at children and families. The cast assembled for that production reflects the cultural weight attached to the project: Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Rob Brydon, and James Corden were all at the height of their cultural prominence, and their involvement elevated the adaptation from a children’s television event to a national cultural moment.
The follow-up — The Gruffalo’s Child — aired on Christmas Day 2011 and similarly drew large audiences, confirming that the Gruffalo animation had established itself as a Christmas viewing tradition. The prospect of a Gruffalo Granny animation — presumably following the same Christmas Day scheduling tradition — gives Gruffalo Granny additional cultural significance as a potential television event beyond its existence as a book. Whether the animation arrives in Christmas 2026 (an extremely tight timeline from the September publication date) or in a subsequent year, its eventual appearance seems highly probable.
Reading the Gruffalo Books: A Guide for Parents and Educators
The Literacy Value of the Gruffalo Series
The Gruffalo series has been used in literacy education since the original book’s publication in 1999, and its specific textual properties make it unusually well-suited for a range of early reading and pre-reading activities. The rhyming couplet structure — which Donaldson has used throughout her career and which she has discussed explicitly in terms of its pedagogical value — gives children a predictive framework: once they have heard the first line of a couplet, they can anticipate the rhyme of the second and begin to develop phonological awareness (sensitivity to the sounds of language) through the pleasure of hearing and predicting the rhyme.
The book’s repetitive structure — in which the Mouse encounters the Fox, then the Owl, then the Snake, then the Gruffalo, each encounter following a similar template — provides children with a narrative framework that they can begin to hold in memory after a small number of readings. This memorisation, which children typically achieve without any deliberate effort simply through the pleasure of repeated readings, builds reading comprehension skills: understanding that stories have structures, that characters recur, that actions have consequences.
The National Literacy Trust’s Early Words Matter programme used the Gruffalo books precisely because these textual properties — rhyme, repetition, predictive structure, engaging characters — create exactly the conditions in which early language and literacy development flourish. Gruffalo Granny inherits all of these properties from the series’ established DNA, and its September 2026 publication date in the National Year of Reading specifically positions it as a reading-promotion tool as well as a publishing event.
Using Gruffalo Books in Schools
Teachers across the UK have used the Gruffalo series as a classroom resource for 25 years, and multiple curriculum-linked activity packs, worksheets, and teaching guides are available from Macmillan and from educational resource providers. Typical school uses of the Gruffalo books include:
Shared reading: Reading the book aloud to the whole class, inviting children to join in with the repetitive and rhyming sections, discussing the plot and characters.
Phonics: Using the book’s rhyme scheme to develop phonological awareness — identifying the rhyming pairs (wood/hood, toad/road, mouse/house), exploring onset and rime, practising blending and segmenting.
Creative writing: Using the book’s repetitive structure as a template for children’s own stories — substituting different animals, different settings, or different trickster characters into the same narrative architecture.
Drama: Re-enacting the story, with children playing the roles of Mouse, Fox, Owl, Snake, and the Gruffalo, developing speaking and listening skills and understanding of character motivation.
Art and craft: Illustrating the characters, making Gruffalo puppets, creating a frieze of the deep dark wood scenes — activities that develop fine motor skills, artistic expression, and comprehension through visual representation.
Gruffalo Granny’s arrival in September 2026 will add a new resource to this long-established tradition, with the addition of the Granny character opening new possibilities for activities around intergenerational relationships, the concept of “coming to stay,” and the contrast between the characters’ physical attributes.
The Gruffalo Franchise: Wider World
Merchandise and Licensing
The Gruffalo’s commercial reach extends far beyond books into one of the most comprehensively licensed children’s property catalogues in British publishing history. Gruffalo merchandise includes soft toys, clothing, school bags, lunch boxes, bedroom accessories, party supplies, puzzles, games, colouring books, sticker books, bath toys, crockery, and hundreds of other categories. The Gruffalo character — with his distinctive physical description (“terrible claws and terrible jaws, knobbly knees and turned out toes, a poisonous wart at the end of his nose, purple prickles all over his back”) — translates exceptionally well into three-dimensional soft toy form, and Gruffalo soft toys have been among the most consistent-selling children’s toys in UK retail for over two decades.
Gruffalo Granny’s introduction as a new character will inevitably prompt an expansion of the merchandise range. A Gruffalo Granny soft toy — grey with red prickles, green eyes, and perhaps a miniature walking stick and knapsack — seems essentially inevitable and is likely to be among the most sought-after children’s products in the Christmas 2026 market, which begins to build from September onwards in UK retail.
The Gruffalo’s Educational and Charity Connections
Donaldson’s connection to the National Literacy Trust and the National Year of Reading is part of a longer pattern of engagement with literacy charities and reading-promotion organisations throughout her career. As Children’s Laureate from 2011 to 2013, she specifically championed the role of public libraries in children’s reading and advocated for sustained funding of school and public library services. Her campaigns during her laureate period — “Shake a Story,” a programme bringing storytelling and book-sharing experiences to children in deprived communities — gave concrete form to her commitment to ensuring that the pleasure of books was not restricted to children whose families could afford to buy them.
Gruffalo Granny’s explicit connection to the National Year of Reading continues this tradition: it is presented not merely as a book but as a contribution to a national effort to improve children’s reading. Donaldson’s decision to return to the Gruffalo series specifically in response to a literacy campaign — rather than purely for commercial reasons — is consistent with the values she demonstrated during her laureate period and throughout her career as an author who has consistently prioritised the accessibility and social value of books for all children.
FAQs
What is Gruffalo Granny?
Gruffalo Granny is the third book in the Gruffalo series by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, published by Macmillan Children’s Books on 10 September 2026. It follows The Gruffalo (1999) and The Gruffalo’s Child (2004) and introduces a brand-new character — the Gruffalo’s mother. The book opens with the line “The Gruffalo said to his daughter one day, ‘Your Gruffalo Granny is coming to stay.'” It is the first new Gruffalo story in over 22 years.
When does Gruffalo Granny come out?
Gruffalo Granny is published in hardback and audiobook on 10 September 2026 by Macmillan Children’s Books. The book is currently available for pre-order from all major UK bookshops including Amazon, Waterstones, and WHSmith, as well as from independent children’s bookshops. The ISBN for the UK hardback is 9781035065516.
What does Gruffalo Granny look like?
Based on the first official illustration revealed at the British Library on 6 February 2026, Gruffalo Granny has grey fur with red prickles on her back (compared to the Gruffalo’s brown fur with purple prickles), green eyes (compared to his orange eyes), and she carries a walking stick and a knapsack. She is visually distinct from the Gruffalo himself — the different fur colour, prickle colour, and eye colour were deliberate design choices to make her immediately identifiable as a separate character while clearly belonging to the same family.
Who wrote Gruffalo Granny?
Gruffalo Granny is written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler — the same creative team responsible for The Gruffalo (1999) and The Gruffalo’s Child (2004), as well as Room on the Broom, The Snail and the Whale, Stick Man, and many other beloved picture books. Axel Scheffler had previously been understood to be reluctant to return to the Gruffalo world but described Donaldson’s new text as “impossible to resist.”
Why did it take so long for a third Gruffalo book?
Julia Donaldson has explained that the basic idea for Gruffalo Granny had existed for many years but she “couldn’t think how to develop it.” She was inspired to return to the story by the National Literacy Trust’s Early Words Matter programme, which used the first two Gruffalo books, and by the broader campaign to address declining reading levels among young children in the UK. Her own experience of being a grandmother to nine grandchildren also contributed to the project’s development. She first confirmed the book publicly in April 2025 before the full announcement on 6 February 2026.
What characters return in Gruffalo Granny?
Gruffalo Granny features the return of all the key characters from both previous Gruffalo books: Fox, Snake, Owl, and of course the clever Mouse. The Gruffalo and his daughter (the Gruffalo’s Child from the second book) also feature as central characters, with the Gruffalo Granny introduced as the Gruffalo’s visiting mother. This means the core cast of both The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child are reunited in the third book alongside the new character.
How many Gruffalo books are there?
There are three books in the Gruffalo series: The Gruffalo (published 23 March 1999), The Gruffalo’s Child (published 3 September 2004), and Gruffalo Granny (published 10 September 2026). Together the first two books have sold 18.2 million copies and been translated into 115 languages and dialects. Gruffalo Granny is the first new Gruffalo story in over 22 years and only the third in a 27-year history of the series.
How many Gruffalo books have been sold worldwide?
The first two Gruffalo books — The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child — have combined sales of 18.2 million copies worldwide, translated into 115 languages and dialects. The Gruffalo alone has sold over 13.5 million copies. Together these figures make the Gruffalo series one of the most commercially successful British children’s picture book series ever published. Gruffalo Granny is expected to add substantially to these totals given the global excitement around the new book’s announcement.
Where was the Gruffalo Granny announcement made?
The title and first image of Gruffalo Granny were revealed on 6 February 2026. The announcement was made on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, and the first illustration was projected on the side of the British Library in London that same evening. A similar projection also took place in Glasgow. Julia Donaldson was present at the British Library, where she read the first two Gruffalo books to assembled schoolchildren before the projection of the new character’s image.
Is there an audiobook of Gruffalo Granny?
Yes — the audiobook edition of Gruffalo Granny is being published simultaneously with the hardback on 10 September 2026. The previous Gruffalo audiobooks have featured celebrated actors in the voice cast — the BBC animation of The Gruffalo featured Helena Bonham Carter, Robbie Coltrane, Rob Brydon, and James Corden. Details of the audiobook cast for Gruffalo Granny have not yet been confirmed.
Will there be a Gruffalo Granny animation?
No details about a Gruffalo Granny animation have been confirmed as of the writing of this guide. The previous two Gruffalo books were adapted into BBC One Christmas Day animations — The Gruffalo in 2009 (nearly 10 million viewers) and The Gruffalo’s Child in 2011. Given the commercial and cultural significance of Gruffalo Granny, an animated adaptation is widely anticipated, but no announcement had been made before the book’s publication date of 10 September 2026.
What is Julia Donaldson’s connection to grandmotherhood?
Julia Donaldson has said she is personally a grandmother of nine grandchildren, which directly inspired the Gruffalo Granny character and the book’s theme of a grandmother coming to stay. She has also spoken about her own memories of her grandmother, who lived upstairs in the family home and read her Edward Lear and Alice in Wonderland — a personal connection to intergenerational reading that shapes her understanding of the shared reading experience that the Gruffalo series is primarily used for.
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