The Tale of Benjamin Bunny is a classic Beatrix Potter “little book”. It was first published more than 100 years ago (in 1904) but still delights children and adults with a simple storyline and wonderfully descriptive language.
Summary: Benjamin Bunny visits his cousin, Peter Rabbit, who has lost his clothes. They set off to steal them back from Mr McGregor’s scarecrow, encountering some unexpected challenges along the way. Every double page spread has a colour picture, and paragraphs rather than single lines of text. The language is at times a little unfamiliar to very young children, but by no means inappropriate. This is the kind of book we wish children would find familiar. A generation’s grammar and vocabulary would be improved by more widespread reading of such books. Some of the paragraphs needed subsequent paraphrasing or re-discussion for the first few read-throughs to ensure our youngest reader had understood the general themes. After a few explanatory reads, we were surprised by how readily the book read in its original language was understood by a young toddler.
Best Bit: The language. This isn’t one of those children’s books with single words on a page or over-simplification of storylines. This is a book which will grow with the child as their understanding and vocabulary deepen.
Pages/time to read: 20 minutes
Age range: 2-5 year olds will take increasing pleasure from this book. As we’ve said above, the younger readers may need some abbreviation for the first few read-throughs so they have a sense of the storyline.
Buy or borrow: Buy. A classic
