Unveiled: The secret meanings hidden in the Gruffalo – as Julia Donaldson confirms the 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 episode.

A new book in the ‘The Gruffalo’ series, written by Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler, will be on the shelves in 2026.

As every parent will probably know, the original tells the story of a courageous mouse that encounters a series of predators-including the beast of the same name with two hairs.

But if you thought that this best book book was nothing more than a charming forest area, you were wrong.

According to a scientific study, this ‘lively and complex text’ has hidden political meanings that have been overlooked so far.

The book of 700 words ‘offers involvement in 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 indicate, ‘The Gruffalo’ is a ‘spectacular successful’ book with tens of millions of sales in tens of languages ​​since the publication in 1999.

‘The Gruffalo’ is the winner of the prestigious Prize Nestle Smarties, while a poll by BBC Radio 2 from 2009 it identified as the best story about going to sleep for children.

Inspired by a Chinese folk tale, it tells the story of a mouse that walks through the ‘Deep Dark Wood’ when he encounters three animals – foxes, owl and snake.

In turn, these three shady characters ask the rapidly thinking mouse to accompany them home for a meal that they intend to eat it.

Although this may sound like a traditional fairytale -like setup, the thorough analysis of the book of the book of the book reveals a complex representation of international politics with multiple meanings.

Firstly, the wood is a metaphor for the world, while the fox, owl and snake ‘self -interest, survival seekers are related to world leaders.

“They are all a kind of unitary actors who are no more meaningful way than to try to satisfy their own self -interests,” said Jarvis.

In the book, the mouse manages to avoid the fox, the owl and the snake through the frightening image of the fictional Gruffalo, which has ‘sharp teeth’, ‘terrible claws’, ‘Orange eyes’, to call a poisonous wart on the end of his nose and ‘purple puncture over his back’.

This, the team claims, reflects the tendency of a politician or a world leader to find out empty threats to influence other global powers and to get what they want.

Examples include Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Anti-British propaganda During his war against Ukraine, or the threats of Donald Trump to build a wall between the US and Mexico.

“What the book does very nicely is to successfully demonstrate that security threats can be called, can be made, said Jarvis.

What is more, ‘The Gruffalo’ presents a ‘fundamental decolonial criticism’ of the world – where several incompatible characters are able to cross paths.

In this way it refers to an increasingly united world without borders or boundaries possibly a metaphor for freely 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 nineties.

But they point out that she and Illustrator Axel Scheffler participated directly in constant political conversations in the past.

Donaldson, for example, suggested that her book ‘The Smeds and the Smoos’ from 2019 ‘could be seen very much as a remaining book’ after Brexit.

In the meantime, their collaboration includes a series of cartoons that explain the Covid crisis one of the Gruffalo and his child’s stay[ing] In the Gruffalo Cave.

Published in the Peer-Reviewed Journal Overview of international studiesThe newspaper shows that picture books for children are not ‘alone for children’.

The authors claim that the picture books of children are ‘far from trivial, disposable curios’, but instead ‘important sites of world politics’.

“The display of the Gruffalo of the Mouse with four predatory carnivores can easily be read as an easily identifiable allegory of a characteristic realistic anarchical world in which life is filthy, brutal and short,” they say.

‘Building on this, children’s books also offer potentially important insight into the politics of resistance and/or social values.

“There is a rich potential for future research on this emerging field.”