Who needs rhyme, anyway? (answer: everyone)

How 'The Gruffalo' and other rhyming picture books improve children's literacy, speech, and cognitive development.

I originally wrote this essay back in 2021, during my first semester in VCFA’s Writing for Children and Young Adults program. It was inspired by a conversation I saw happening on Twitter, where writers and publishing professionals were debating whether or not there is still a market for picture books that rhyme. I could write a whole essay on why that severely ticked me off—but instead, I decided to write an essay in defense of rhyming books, using brain science to back my argument.

When I first started this newsletter, I had the idea of resurrecting some of my old grad school essays I thought might be interesting to other writers or book people. I’ve got tons more in my Google Drive, just waiting so if you like what you see here, let me know!

In Defense of Rhyming Books: The Gruffalo and Linguistic Development

A mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood. 

A fox saw the mouse and the mouse looked good.

“Where are you going to, little brown mouse?

“Come and have lunch in my underground house.”

“That’s terribly kind of you Fox, but no—

I’m going to have lunch with a gruffalo.” (3)

So begins Julia Donaldson’s classic tale of a clever little mouse who outsmarts all the predators of the forest, including those of his own imagination. The story is about 700 words long, made up of rhyming couplets. Though the rhyming structure of picture books has fallen out of favor in mainstream publishing over the last few years, The Gruffalo endures. Its lyrical rhymes and metric flow make it easy to memorize and recite—even without the pictures to guide them, I’ve witnessed children as young as two or three recall The Gruffalo word-for-word, as though it were a nursery rhyme. Rhyming picture books like these are incredibly influential to linguistic development in children. Nursery rhymes themselves have a well-documented impact on cognitive development in children, across cultures and languages. Like these familiar songs and poems, rhyming picture books have a clear staying-power in the child (and adult!) mind.  The simple structure is easily understood by young ears, and the silliness of nonsense words like Gruffalo or the mish-mash language of Dr. Seuss is fun and enticing. Like Donaldson, we can help children develop essential social, cognitive, and creative skills by using rhyming structure in our picture book manuscripts . 

There is a game we’ve played in my family for as long as I can remember. It goes like this; the driver says a word (example: “hat”), if there’s anyone in the passenger’s seat, they go next with a word that rhymes (example: “cat”), then it goes to the backseat and the child/children continue the round (“bat,” “mat,” “rat,” etc). Once everyone has had a turn, the circle begins again. The game continues until no one can think of another word that rhymes, and then a new word is introduced. The only rule is no repeats, with the exception of homophones. Slant rhymes are frowned upon. This game carried us through countless road-trips because it is uniquely engaging for both kids and grown-ups. There’s no point system, no “winner,” just the plain enjoyment of taking turns trying to think of more rhymes. To me, The Gruffalo reads almost like my family’s word game. The rhymes are simple and easy to anticipate. Wood / good. House / mouse. But no / gruffalo. Donaldson goes on to rhyme “gruffalo” with “know,” brilliantly exercising the homophone rule. Although I did not encounter The Gruffalo until I was an adult, I understand why it has become such a beloved piece of children’s literature. I like to think I enjoyed reading it just as much in my twenties as I would have as a toddler. 

Initially published in the UK in 1999, The Gruffalo has captured readers for over twenty years, winning various awards for children’s literature and being adapted into a film, a play, and an amusement park ride. In the Forest of Dean in England, there is a “Gruffalo trail” named after the book and featuring sculptures inspired by Axel Scheffler’s iconic artwork. In my six years of bookselling, I’ve whipped out The Gruffalo for Sunday morning storytimes more times than I can count, much to the delight of my audience. I’ve described it as “cheating” to my coworkers because it is such a guaranteed success. It is about as effective on 3- to 7-year-olds as The Itsy Bitsy Spider or If You’re Happy and You Know It. 

A gruffalo doesn’t become The Gruffalo until the second half of the text, when the mouse’s tall tales catch up with him in the form of the real-life monster he had only been pretending to meet for lunch. The narrative repeats all the descriptions the mouse gave to the other forest animals, this time as a question — “But who is this creature with terrible claws/And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws?” and so on (14). This is a simple but effective way to play with the reader’s expectations. Even very young children will understand that this is not what the mouse expected to happen. The gruffalo was supposed to be a made-up story, but now he’s here! And like the fox, owl, and snake, he would like to eat the mouse for lunch. “‘My favorite food!’ the Gruffalo said./’You’ll taste good on a slice of bread!’” (16). 

Of course, the hero of this story is the mouse. We follow him from start to finish on his walk through the woods and back again, as he encounters various predators who want to eat him. The mouse manages to evade consumption by telling increasingly tall tales of his friend, the Gruffalo, who is a much more intimidating predator. Ultimately, when the Gruffalo does appear and threatens to eat the mouse himself, the mouse one-ups himself by convincing the Gruffalo that he is actually the most fearsome creature in the woods. This tradition of using small animals as allegorical place-holders for a child audience goes all the way back to Aesop’s fables. Like children, mice and frogs and rabbits are small. Like children, their worlds are compact and localized. Sometimes, like children, they wear tiny waistcoats and like to steal carrots from the farmer next door. In Donaldson’s deep dark wood, the mouse is the smallest and weakest creature (something I’m sure younger siblings in particular can empathize with). While, overall, The Gruffalo is mostly a frivolous tale told for the sake of silliness, there is a lesson to be learned in the way the mouse uses his creativity and cleverness to outwit everyone else in the forest, even animals much larger and dangerous than him.

The mouse tells us the Gruffalo is an animal with “terrible tusks, and terrible claws, / And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws” (4), as well as  “knobbly knees, and turned-out toes, / And a poisonous wart at the end of his nose;” (8) “his eyes are orange, his tongue is black; / He has purple prickles all over his back” (12). The Gruffalo is, in simpler terms, a monster. The very first word used to describe him is terrible, which children can understand to mean “bad” or, as is implied by the root of the word, terrifying. The Gruffalo is meant to be scary! The mouse’s descriptions clearly scare away the other forest animals. But the experience had by the intended young  audience is much more enjoyable. Donaldson’s use of rhymes and alliteration turn what would otherwise be a frightening description into something fun. Hitting that hard T on “terrible tusks and terrible claws and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws” is just as satisfying as any playground song or jump-rope rhyme. We get it again with “turned-out toes.” Even the creature’s name, Gruffalo, is as delightful as it is nonsensical. It has gruff right there in it, and while a toddler may be unfamiliar with that particular adjective, it sounds like what it is. There is a clear feeling to Donaldson’s verse that captures the sense of her descriptions even if the audience may not know the exact meaning of all of the words. We can tell that the Gruffalo is scary, and terrible, and also a little silly. 

Another merit of “knobbly knees and turned-out toes, and a poisonous wart at the end of his nose” is the mix of familiar and new vocabulary. Most toddlers are able to identify these body parts (see: “head, shoulders, knees, and . . .”), but may not have encountered adjectives like “knobbly” or the concept of a “poisonous wart.” This mix of “easy” or familiar words with new, complex ones is an incredibly effective way to build a child’s vocabulary. The Gruffalo’s opening line, “a mouse took a stroll through the deep dark wood,” is also a good example of enrichment in Donaldson’s language. This line could have easily been “a mouse took a walk through the deep dark wood.” The definition of “stroll” is clear through its usage, however, and now the audience has learned a new synonym. 

The language of The Gruffalo is beneficial to even younger listeners as well. Phonological awareness is the ability to “work with sounds in spoken language” (Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education). It is the way babies learn to speak, and one of the skills accessed when later learning to read. There is a reason “baby talk” is so reliant on melody, reconstructing sentences to be simpler and sing-songy. As babies develop an awareness of language, they need cues as to where words start and end. Rhymes are particularly successful in helping children understand separate word sounds, because the words all end the same way. That ending becomes a signifier that one word has ended, and another begun. Once a baby can pick out individual words in the sound of a sentence, they can work from there to develop an understanding of meaning and context. All of which is to say: reading books that rhyme aloud to a baby is an incredibly effective way of helping them learn to speak. 

Once children do begin to speak, they often struggle with pronunciation. Multi-syllable words in particular are easily mangled in a toddler’s mouth. We’ve all heard small children stumble over difficult constants like Rs and Ss and Ts. Repeating a phrase like “terrible tusks and terrible claws / and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws,” helps teach enunciation. Though these lines may be difficult for a child to pronounce, they’re fun to say—in large part, thanks to the rhyme. This speech development also leads to better communication skills. Many toddlers are reliant on family members to “translate” their wants and needs to outsiders. No one can understand a two-year-old better than their own parents. But by the time a child is ready to start school, they need to be able to communicate with teachers and other children. Though practicing good elocution may not be our primary objective when reading and writing picture books that rhyme, it’s definitely a bonus for childhood development.

There is also something to be said for the simple enjoyment children find in rhyming verse. Rhymes are soothing to our ears and our minds, they have the power to lull us to sleep in a lullaby or get us laughing with a limerick. Even for children who may not be able to understand the complexity of the mouse’s shenanigans yet, the sound of the story itself is enjoyable. Rhyme also has a unique relationship with memory, which explains the enduring power of nursery rhymes. We are able to recall rhymes easily, and thus stories that rhyme naturally make more of an impression. 

It’s a little strange to think about the craft of nursery rhyme; we don’t think of them as having been written so much as being passed down by parents or teachers to children, often orally. It’s clear, however, that the style of these poems is successful. They’ve survived time, geography, and the evolution of language to the extreme. Aside from helping children learn to speak and develop an ear for pleasant sounds, these rhymes chronicle the language and pronunciation of the past. In English, we have nursery rhymes to thank for the knowledge that “none” was once pronounced as “n-ohn”—as in, this little piggy had roast beef, this little piggy had none, as did Old Mother Hubbard’s poor dog. And despite the fact that these poems no longer rhyme, we still recite them to our children! Nursery rhymes are inherently short, easy to remember, and fun to say. It’s also worth noting that most nursery rhymes lack any overt moral “lesson.” Their value lies more in developing motor skills (The Itsy Bitsy Spider, I’m a Little Tea Pot, Pat-a-Cake), counting (One Two Buckle My Shoe), and general linguistics. It’s really no surprise Mother Goose has outlived the New England Primer. 

Stories like The Gruffalo also inspire creativity in children. We witness the mouse come up with increasingly silly descriptions of the Gruffalo. “His favorite food is roasted fox” he tells the fox on page 4, which becomes “owl ice cream” on page 8, and “scrambled snake” on page 12. While little kids might be familiar with the concept of “scrambled eggs,” “scrambled snake” is silly to say and to envision.  While “roasted fox” may be in the realm of possibility of a meal someone might eat, “owl ice cream” and “scrambled snake” are at the very least ridiculous, if not impossible. They serve as punchlines to the terrifying descriptions the mouse gives each animal of the Gruffalo himself, and in my experience, always get quite a rise out of the audience. By putting two entirely unexpected things together for humor, Donaldson is framing this creative structure for children as well. After all, if this little mouse can convince a big, scary owl that he’s going to be made into ice cream, what isn’t possible?

Another important aspect of social-cognitive development is the theory of mind. This is our ability to conceive of points of view, both our own and other people’s. Essentially, the capacity to think about thinking. As our theory of mind develops, so does our empathy and self-awareness. A key element to the story of The Gruffalo is the understanding that each animal in the story has a different point of view. The fox, the owl, and the snake do not know that the mouse is fibbing about the Gruffalo, but we (the reader) do. “Very young children tend to be more egocentric and are often unable to think about the mental states of others,” explains Verywell Mind. The Gruffalo is nothing if not a shining example of dramatic irony. The reader and the mouse hold far more information than the rest of the animals in the story. The success of the humor is reliant on our understanding that the fox, the owl, the snake, and the Gruffalo do not have the same information as each other or the mouse. 

When the Gruffalo himself appears halfway through the text, it’s a surprise to the audience as much as it is to the mouse! As far as we know up until this point, the Gruffalo is completely made-up, just a scary story the mouse tells to get the fox, owl, and snake off his back. At the bottom of page 13, as the snake slithers away, the mouse says to himself, “Silly old snake! Doesn’t he know, / There’s no such thing as a gruffal . . .” —page turn— “oh!” At last, we see the Gruffalo complete. 

But who is this creature with terrible claws

And terrible teeth in his terrible jaws?

He has knobbly-knees and turned-out toes

And a poisonous wart at the end of his nose.

His eyes are orange, his tongue is black;

He has purple prickles all over his back. (14)

This repetition of the descriptors we saw in couplets earlier in the book come together here on a single page. Beside it, we get a full-page illustration of the Gruffalo with his tongue sticking out, looking hungry. On the next page, the Gruffalo spots the mouse. “‘My favorite food!’ the Gruffalo said. / ‘You’ll taste good on a slice of bread!’” (15). Here is the moment of greatest tension in the entire story. Finally, it seems, the mouse’s lies have caught up to him. Now he’ll be eaten by the very creature he thought he invented! Here, the reader may actually start to fear for the mouse, but not for long. The page is split with an image of the Gruffalo and the mouse side-by-side. Beneath it, the text continues: “‘Good?’ said the mouse. “‘Don’t call me good! / I’m the scariest creature in this wood. / Just walk behind me and soon you’ll see / Everyone is afraid of me.’” What a bluff! But it works. As the mouse retraces his steps through the deep dark wood, he once again encounters the snake, the owl, and the fox. Seeing the Gruffalo behind him, they run away in terror because, of course, the mouse has just told them that they are the Gruffalo’s favorite snack and he is the Gruffalo’s friend. Even adult readers feel the satisfaction in this pay-off. The whole story was building to this moment! After convincing the Gruffalo that the mouse is truly a creature to be feared, he declares, 

“Well, Gruffalo,” said the mouse. “You see?

Everyone is afraid of me!

But now my tummy’s beginning to rumble. 

My favorite food is — gruffalo crumble!”

“Gruffalo crumble!” the Gruffalo said, 

And quick as the wind he turned and fled. (23)

This subversion of the pattern we learned with the fox, the owl, and the snake has now been flipped to make the mouse the ultimate power-holder. The book ends with one of my favorite lines in children’s literature: “All was quiet in the deep dark wood. / The mouse found a nut and the nut was good” (28). I think it’s a beautiful and effective ending—it parallels the opening lines, but this time all is well. “The nut was good,” is so simple, yet so evocative. For a child, “good” signals a happy ending. All is well with our friend the mouse. As an adult, I think of it as a beautiful testimony to simple pleasures. May we all find our nuts, and may they be good. 

I would be remiss to ignore that language itself is not the only asset of The Gruffalo. As we follow the mouse deeper into the wood, we watch him encounter various predators who wish to have him over “for lunch.” The euphemism here is that the mouse will be lunch, but that is never stated directly. Though foxes and snakes are as maligned in children’s literature as the big bad wolf, there is a chance this layer of the story may go over some kids’ heads. Thus, the illustrations also hint at the menacing intentions of the fox, the owl, and the snake. Each animal is introduced with down-slanted eyebrows and a twisted grin. They look sneaky. The language and images are working together to help the young audience understand the true intentions of these creatures. The grown-up reader can strengthen this as well with tone of voice when reading the predator’s dialogue. The pictures are especially important to the latter half of the story, when the mouse and the Gruffalo walk together through the woods. The other animal’s lines of sight  are clearly set above the mouse’s height, and when they run away in fear it is from the Gruffalo, not the mouse. But as far as the Gruffalo can tell, the mouse is the one inciting fear. What a silly monster, and what a clever mouse. 

Additionally, images can provide helpful context when encountering new vocabulary words. Even before we meet the Gruffalo properly, we’re given glimpses of his visage throughout the mouse’s initial journey. Earlier, I mentioned the value of phrases like “knobbly knees and turned-out toes” grounding new language in the familiar and accessible; this is compounded by the accompanying illustrations of the Gruffalo’s bulbous kneecaps and toes pointing every which way. They also provide an emotional context to the story. Though the wood is described as “deep” and “dark,” the illustrations are bright and nonthreatening. Even as the mouse stares down increasingly dangerous predators, we can see that he does so with a smug little grin. The illustrations offer a sense of comfort even when things start to go wrong, promising us that this is a fun story that will turn out all right in the end. While the language of The Gruffalo works in a similar way to nursery rhymes, the story itself would not be effective as a poem alone. The illustrations are vitally important. 

As writers, we should strive to accomplish so much as The Gruffalo in only 32 pages. While rhyming picture books may not be everyone’s cup of tea, I would argue that they are absolutely essential in the greater kidlit landscape. In addition to combining the genius of nursery rhymes with beautiful illustrations and visual storytelling, they have a legitimate educational value. They help children develop social skills, cognitive understanding, speech, and creativity. It’s also worth noting that kids enjoy them. Publishing is a business, and like all businesses, its main objective is profit. Small children, often, do not invest in their own picture book libraries. But the books that become beloved, the ones that are read over and over to the point of spinal destruction, those are the stories we strive to tell. And if generations of Gruffalo fans can clue us into anything, it’s that rhyming picture books deserve a permanent place on the shelf.