The creators of the beloved children’s book monster, The Gruffalo, have just released new images with some of their best-known characters, all experiencing the current crisis. They show that even well known children’s character The Gruffalo is social distancing!

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Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, who created one of the most popular children’s story book characters in recent times, The Gruffalo have reimagined some of their characters in light of coronavirus.

They have created a series of images showing how The Gruffalo, Stick Man, Zog, and others are coping with isolation, home schooling and social distancing.

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Even The Gruffalo Is Social Distancing

Image credit Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler

The series of 12 images, published in full in The Guardian newspaper, include an updated version of Room on the Broom, in which the characters, rather than fighting for space on the broomstick, are sitting far apart.

For their first book character, the little old lady in A Squash and a Squeeze can’t take her animals into her house. She has to rely on them buying her groceries while she self-isolates inside her home.

The creators of The Gruffalo children’s stories have made new scenes using characters from books to help children adjust to living through the coronavirus pandemic.

The Best-Selling The Gruffalo Book

In case, by some chance, you are not familiar with it, The Gruffalo, first published in 1999, tells the story of a mouse taking a walk in the woods. He meets all sorts of characters on his way to apparently find The Gruffalo, a huge terrifying creature with terrible teeth and a “poisonous wart on the end of his nose”.

The book has sold 13M copies, and has been turned into an animated film as well as stage play.

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How Did These New Images Come About?

Alex Scheffler had apparently been thinking about what he could do as an illustrator to help people through the coronavirus crisis. He wanted to do something light-hearted and cheer people up.

Author Julia Donaldson said that “Usually with the books it is me who starts things off, but Axel had this idea of doing some witty sketches, each one based on our books and each one incorporating a sort of tip about coronavirus.”

There’s a new pair of lines or couplet for each book, so for example, for The Gruffalo, the lines read “The Gruffalo, bursting with laughter, said ‘You go ahead and I will follow two metres after'” to go with the illustration.

Image credit Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler

One of my favourites from the series is the one with the grandparents waiting for the grandkids to call:

Image credit Julia Donaldson and Alex Scheffler

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You can also enjoy a weekly broadcast on The Gruffalo Facebook page with Julia Donaldson reading stories, poems and singing songs.

Over to you now. Did you enjoy these new The Gruffalo pictures? What did you think of fact that The Gruffalo is social distancing? Tell us in the comments below.