"My original Gruffalo was scarier, with bigger claws – and the mouse had a Bavarian hat and lederhosen," says Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler for the Guardian.
From the story...
I quickly realised that using a tiger would be a problem; I had to invent a predator who wouldn't really have been in the wood. It was then that I came up with the "Silly old fox, doesn't he know/ There's no such thing as a …" couplet. "Gruffalo" just fitted the rhyme.
I submitted the story to the publisher, and they sat on it for a year. I started to think it would never see the light, but one day my husband said: "Look, it's so good. Why don't you just send it to Axel?" So I did, although I hardly knew him; he'd illustrated my first book, but I'd only met him once or twice. Within a week I got a letter from Alison Green, Macmillan's picture book editor, saying he'd shown it to them and they were desperate to publish it.
It wasn't all plain sailing; Alison phoned me at one point to ask: "Do you envisage these animals wearing clothes?" Axel's first sketches had the mouse in a checked shirt and the fox in a frock coat, which was almost OK – but the snake in a bow tie was a definite problem. The Gruffalo took a couple of attempts. I still have some original sketches: in one he's very upright and ogreish, in another he's on all fours and looks like a wild boar. I'd originally imagined him as a bit more colourful and weird – but he's absolutely right the way Axel drew him.
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