Der Grüffelo

A modern fairy tale

You can hardly be too young or too old for the Grüffelo. This is just as true for the wonderful picture book by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler as it is for the stage version of the story. This production of Grüffelo has delighted well over a million visitors in England and around the world. The Junges Theater Bonn produced the German-language premiere of the musical for children aged 3 and over and has been showing the play with huge success since 2010.

Little versus big

A little mouse lives in a big forest. There are some animals there that would love to eat the mouse: the owl, the fox and the snake. But the mouse is clever and knows how to help himself. He simply invents the Grüffelo - a monster with fiery eyes, terrible claws, a horrible paw and a poisonous wart on his face. When the mouse tells the other animals about the dangerous Grüffelo, they are terrified and flee from him. What luck that the monster doesn't actually exist, because the mouse only made him up.... But suddenly he is actually faced with a monster that looks like the Gruffalo. And now the mouse has a problem, because his favorite dish is "sandwiches with a little mouse". But the resourceful mouse is not intimidated and even teaches the big, strong Grüffelo to be afraid...

Award-winning and popular

The play is a modern fairy tale in which the courage of the little ones triumphs over the fear of the big ones. Published in 1999, The Gruffalo became one of Britain's most successful children's books and is already considered a modern classic. The imaginative rhymes and ideas by author Julia Donaldson and the loving drawings by illustrator Axel Scheffler have won Grüffelo several awards. Among other things, the book was awarded the prestigious British "Nestlé Children's Book Prize", translated into more than 30 languages and sold more than 10 million copies.