Revealed: The secret meanings hidden in The Gruffalo – as Julia Donaldson confirms first new book in 20 years
After more than 20 years, one of the most successful children’s books of all time is getting another installment.
A new book in ‘The Gruffalo’ series, written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, is set to hit the shelves in 2026.
As any parent will likely know, the original tells the tale of a plucky mouse encountering a series of predators – including the eponymous two-horned beast.
But if you thought there was nothing more to this best-selling picture book than a charming woodland narrative, you were wrong.
According to a scientific study, this ‘vibrant and complex text’ has hidden political meanings which until now have been overlooked.
The 700-word book ‘offers an engagement with world politics’ and an insight into ‘sociopolitical worlds’, the study claims.
The study was conducted by Lee Jarvis, professor of international politics at the University of East Anglia, and Nick Robinson, professor of politics and international studies at the University of Leeds.
As the experts point out, ‘The Gruffalo’ is a ‘spectacularly successful’ book with tens of millions of sales across dozens of languages since its publication in 1999.
First published in 1999 in the UK by Macmillan Children’s Books, ‘The Gruffalo’ written by Julia Donaldson (right) has been a phenomenal commercial and critical success
First published in 1999 in the UK by Macmillan Children’s Books, The Gruffalo has been a phenomenal commercial and critical success
‘The Gruffalo’ is the winner of the prestigious Nestle Smarties Prize, while a 2009 poll of BBC Radio 2 listeners identified it as the best bedtime story for children.
Inspired by a Chinese folk tale, it tells the story of a mouse strolling through the ‘deep dark wood’ when he encounters three animals – fox, owl and snake.
In turn, these three shady characters ask the quick-thinking mouse to accompany them home for a meal – whereupon they intend to eat it.
Although this may sound like a traditional fairy tale set-up, the duo’s thorough 9,000-word analysis of the book reveals a complex depiction of international politics with multiple meanings.
Firstly, the wood is a metaphor for the world, while the fox, owl and snake are ‘self-interested, survival-seekers’ akin to global leaders.
‘They’re all sort of unitary actors that don’t engage in any more meaningful way other than to attempt to satisfy their own self interests,’ said Jarvis.
In the book, the mouse manages to evade the fox, the owl and the snake by conjuring up the terrifying image of the fictional Gruffalo, which has ‘sharp teeth’, ‘terrible claws’, ‘orange eyes’ ‘a poisonous wart on the end of his nose’ and ‘purple prickles all over his back’.
This, the team argue, reflects a politician’s or a world leader’s tendency to invent empty threats to influence other global powers and get what they want.
The first stories have taken the literary world by storm ever since they were published in 1999 and 2004 respectively. Pictured are illustrator Axel Scheffler and author Julia Donaldson celebrating 20 years of the original book, which was published in 1999
In the book, the wood is a metaphor for the world, while the fox, owl and snake are ‘self-interested, survival-seekers’ akin to global leaders. Pictured, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Moscow, Russia, May 8, 2025
Examples include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s anti-British propaganda during its war on Ukraine, or Donald Trump’s threats to build a wall between the US and Mexico.
‘What the book does very nicely is to demonstrate successfully that security threats can be conjured up, can be created, said Jarvis.
What’s more, ‘The Gruffalo’ presents a ‘fundamental decolonial critique’ of the world – where multiple incompatible characters are able to cross paths.
In this way, it hints at an increasingly unified world without borders or boundaries – potentially a metaphor for free-flowing movement of citizens.
The academics do not claim that author Julia Donaldson was inspired by the global political landscape when writing the book in the 1990s.
But they point out that she and illustrator Axel Scheffler have engaged directly in ongoing political conversations in the past.
For example, Donaldson suggested that her 2019 book ‘The Smeds and The Smoos’ could ‘very much be seen as a Remain book’ following Brexit.
Meanwhile, their collaboration on a series of cartoons explaining the Covid crisis include one of the Gruffalo and his child ‘stay[ing] in the Gruffalo cave.
Published in the peer-reviewed journal Review of International Studies, the paper demonstrates that children’s picture books are not ‘just for kids’.
The authors argue that children’s picture books are ‘far from trivial, disposable curios’ but instead ‘important sites of world politics’.
‘The Gruffalo’s portrayal of mouse’s encounter with four predatory carnivores may be read, simply, as a readily identifiable allegory of a characteristically realist anarchical world in which life is nasty, brutish, and short,’ they say.
‘Building on this, children’s picture books also offer potentially important insight into the politics of resistance and/or social values.
‘There is rich potential for future research in this nascent field.’
