The most endearing detail of Axel Scheffler's art for The Gruffalo's Child by Julia Donaldson (Dial Books for Young Readers, 2005) is the stick doll that she carries thoughout the book. You can see her clutching it on the cover. The year The Gruffalo's Child came out, I made Leo a small stuffed gruffalo, complete with stick doll, and gave it to him together with the book for Christmas (believe me, it was much easier to make than the gruffalo costume he wanted for Halloween that year would have been). The stick doll has since been lost, but I suspect we will be making more once we read Donaldson and Scheffler's latest book: Stick Man. It's available now in the UK (Leo, as a member of The Gruffalo Gang, heard about it first).

I wonder whether Donaldson and Scheffler collaborated at all on this new book? The text of The Gruffalo's Child doesn't say anything about the stick doll (there are some stick animals, too), so I assume that was originally Scheffler's idea, and Donaldson ran with it. At any rate, the kids and I love Donaldson and Scheffler's work, and it seems that kids and parents in Great Britain do, too: two of their books (The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom) made this top ten list of Britain's favorite bedtime stories (scroll down; from The Scotsman, 9/4/2008). Check out The Snail and the Whale, too: highly recommended.

[N.b., at our house we pronounce it GROO-ffa-lo. Don't you?]