Axel Scheffler

About Axel Scheffler

Axel Scheffler (born 12 December 1957) is a German illustrator, born in Hamburg and based in London, best known for drawing The Gruffalo (1999) and many other picture books written by Julia Donaldson.

Scheffler began a history of art degree at the University of Hamburg but left, and after alternative national service caring for people with mental illness he moved to England in 1982 to study visual communication at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Wiltshire, with an exchange term at Cooper Union in New York. After graduating in 1985 he worked in advertising and publishing in London. His first children's book was Helen Cresswell's The Piemakers (1988).

His partnership with Julia Donaldson produced The Gruffalo, published by Macmillan Children's Books in the UK on 23 March 1999, which won the Nestlé Smarties Book Prize and had sold over 13.5 million copies by 2019. Their later books together include The Gruffalo's Child, Room on the Broom, Stick Man, Superworm and Zog. He has also illustrated books by Jon Blake, Paul Shipton and David Henry Wilson, created the Pip and Posy series, illustrated the 70th anniversary edition of T. S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats for Faber and Faber (2009), and drew all seven Royal Mail Christmas stamps of 2012.

For collectors

The Gruffalo was first published in Britain by Macmillan in 1999, with the US edition issued by Viking, so the Macmillan printing is the first edition to look for. Early printings of his other Donaldson collaborations and the 2009 Faber edition of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats are also collected.