It’s difficult to imagine the wonderful children’s story The Gruffalo was created 20 years ago. To celebrate, Royal Mail have issued six special stamps with colourful illustrations of The Gruffalo characters in a chronological story across two horizontal se-tenant strips of three stamps.
The Gruffalo is one of the world’s best-loved monsters. Since it was first published in 1999, the award-winning story of his encounter with the little brown mouse in the deep dark wood has continued to delight children and adults the world over.
Created by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, one of the most successful author/illustrator partnerships in picture book publishing, The Gruffalo is a modern classic, and both mouse and monster have become stars of stage and screen as well as story-time favourites.
A Miniature Sheet features Fox, Owl, Snake and Mouse encountering The Gruffalo in new artwork created by the story’s illustrator Axel Scheffler.
The Gruffalo is one of the world’s best-loved children’s books, which to date has sold over 13.5 million copies worldwide.
Gruffalo fans are everywhere: the story has been translated into over fifty languages, including Thai, Russian, Scots and Maori, and for Classics scholars there is even a Latin edition.
Are there other monster-themed stamps out there? Israel issues a “Monsters” minisheet in 2019, but other that it doesn’t seem to be a common stamp theme.