More specifically, the Big Bad Mouse who, along with the Gruffalo himself has captured Arthur’s imagination big time this week.

He’s loved the books since he was tiny, but only in as much as he generally loves books. Then for his first birthday back in December he was given a copy of ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’ on DVD. He enjoyed it, but was not all that interested in sitting still to watch anything for very long.

But now that’s all changed. I put the film on one day last week when I was trying to get things done, and he was absolutely entranced. Since then he’s asked for it every day – “big bad mouse” and “gruffalo”. Up until recently I’ve not been super keen on lots of screen time. We’ve not watched any kids TV – though Arthur does love watching music performances which we definitely haven’t discouraged. But watching him watching these stories come to life I feel like there’s a whole new world opening up to him.

His concentration is definitely getting a workout – he’ll happily sit for half an hour, fully engaged and calling out when he sees the characters he’s come to love. His vocabulary’s developing too – there are lots of things that are influencing that at the moment of course, but we were all pretty impressed when he came out with “he’s down by the lake, eating gruffalo cake”.

I’m still wary of Arthur spending too much of his day in front of the TV, but I think I may need to relax my guard a little. Filmmaking is storytelling after all, and the more I look the more I realise there are so many stories and films out there for us to explore!