Home › Find a book › Peepo!
Peepo!
by Janet and Allan Ahlberg
A baby wakes early and peeps through a hole in the page at each member of the household going about their morning.
A story about children and families, gentle and rhyming in tone. We would put it with children of 3–4, and at a reading age of about 4 for reading alone.
Nothing flagged
We have not flagged any content in this one that a parent would usually want warning about.
Our take on this book
Through a series of round peep-holes cut in the pages, a baby glimpses the small events of one ordinary day in a wartime family home — breakfast, the garden, bathtime, bed — each hole framing something to spot before the page turns to reveal the whole scene. Janet and Allan Ahlberg's baby classic is a masterpiece of the earliest years: the die-cut holes, the gentle bouncing rhyme and the lovingly detailed 1940s interiors make it a book a very young child returns to again and again. The perspective is the baby's own, which delights the smallest listeners, and the period detail quietly charms the grown-ups reading it. There is nothing in it but warmth and the comfort of a family's ordinary day. For a baby or a child of three or four it is a perfect lap book — the peep-holes turn reading into a game of anticipation — and one of those rare books that genuinely deserves its place in almost every nursery.
If they like this, try these
Chosen by matching age, reading age, tone and subject — not by what is selling.
Alfie Gets in FirstShirley Hughes
Alfie's FeetShirley Hughes
TitchPat Hutchins
DoggerShirley Hughes
Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
Tell us the age, the reading age and what they like, and we will suggest a handful.