Last night I was requested to do independent readings of the British children’s classic The Gruffalo by Julia Donaldson & Axel Scheffler.
For Punkface MacGruder, my younger child, I performed Donaldson’s rhymes as a really bad beat poet (apologies to all beat poets that still exist).
My older child, The Frogger, requested that I do voices*.
Here are my Gruffalo voice inspirations:
Narrator – Me
Mouse – Cary Elwes
Fox – Greg Proops doing Jeremy Irons
Owl – Greg Proops doing Merv Griffin**
Snake – Peter Lorre
Gruffalo – Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs
*There is also a BBC Animated Short based on The Gruffalo. They made somewhat different casting choices.
**It is really based on what I remembered it sounding like. I relistened to that chunk of The Smartest Man in the World and it sounds nothing like what I remembered. Stupid primate neurology.
The Finch and Pea 
Awesome, I read this to my 4 year old and pictured James Gandolfini as The Grufalo.