The Tale of Peter Rabbit

About the book

Peter's mother warns her children to stay away from Mr McGregor's garden, but its vegetables prove more tempting than the safer pleasures available elsewhere. Once Peter enters, appetite gives way to the urgent business of avoiding discovery and finding a way out. Potter builds the story from a sequence of concrete obstacles, giving a small creature's movements and mistakes an immediately understandable scale. Clothes, gates, plants, and hiding places become important parts of the action. The telling is concise and dryly amused, allowing readers to recognise both the appeal of disobedience and the discomfort it produces. This short tale makes suspense from ordinary things, with the familiar security of home providing a quiet measure for the risks taken beyond it.

• Curiosity
• Consequences
• Home and safety

Why read it

For a compact adventure whose precise details make a garden feel like an entire perilous world.

English reading text