“Here’s a little baby, one two three. Stands in his cot, what does he see? Peepo!” So simple, so rhythmically satisfying, so immediately right. Like “pat a cake, pat a cake, baker’s man”, these opening lines to Peepo!, perhaps the best known book written by the British author Allan Ahlberg, who died earlier this week at the age of 87, are hardwired into countless childhoods, read aloud and adored in bedrooms up and down the land ever since it was published in 1981.
I read Peepo! to both my children, and still do, to my two-year-old. Its evergreen appeal stems from the way it both lightly riffs on the baby game Peekaboo! and mimics a baby’s view on their immediate surroundings, growing up in a loving wartime household full of messy domestic cheer.
For those who don’t know the book, which is illustrated by Ahlberg’s long-term collaborator and wife, Janet, who died in 1994, each right hand page has a small port hole (peepo!) through which can be glimpsed part of the illustration on the page that follows: Dad, still asleep in bed in his striped pyjamas; Mum making porridge; Grandma ironing in the parlour.
The book takes place over one day, with Allan’s gentle rhymes guiding the reader with a series of rhetorical question and answers. “Sits in his pushchair, What does he see? He sees a bonfire smoking, Pigeons in the sky. His mother cleaning windows, A dog going by.”
By encouraging even the youngest child to participate in what will happen next, Peepo! paved the way for later groundbreaking interactive books by the Ahlbergs, notably The Jolly Postman, which uses letters inside envelopes to help tell the story.
Yet the true magic of Peepo! lies in its simplicity. Where admittedly terrific children’s books by Julia Donaldson use fantastical settings to appeal to a young child’s imagination, be they Gruffalos in forests or people made from sticks, Peepo! and the book that followed, The Baby’s Catalogue, makes a virtue of the familiar and thus, the reassuring.
A trip to the park with baby’s two elder sisters; Mum dozing in a chair; bathtime, in an iron tub, naturally – this is the 1940s and in Janet’s warmly fuzzy illustrations, this intergenerational family dry their clothes on the grate.
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**From The Telegraph:**
“Here’s a little baby, one two three. Stands in his cot, what does he see? Peepo!” So simple, so rhythmically satisfying, so immediately right. Like “pat a cake, pat a cake, baker’s man”, these opening lines to Peepo!, perhaps the best known book written by the British author Allan Ahlberg, who died earlier this week at the age of 87, are hardwired into countless childhoods, read aloud and adored in bedrooms up and down the land ever since it was published in 1981.
I read Peepo! to both my children, and still do, to my two-year-old. Its evergreen appeal stems from the way it both lightly riffs on the baby game Peekaboo! and mimics a baby’s view on their immediate surroundings, growing up in a loving wartime household full of messy domestic cheer.
For those who don’t know the book, which is illustrated by Ahlberg’s long-term collaborator and wife, Janet, who died in 1994, each right hand page has a small port hole (peepo!) through which can be glimpsed part of the illustration on the page that follows: Dad, still asleep in bed in his striped pyjamas; Mum making porridge; Grandma ironing in the parlour.
The book takes place over one day, with Allan’s gentle rhymes guiding the reader with a series of rhetorical question and answers. “Sits in his pushchair, What does he see? He sees a bonfire smoking, Pigeons in the sky. His mother cleaning windows, A dog going by.”
By encouraging even the youngest child to participate in what will happen next, Peepo! paved the way for later groundbreaking interactive books by the Ahlbergs, notably The Jolly Postman, which uses letters inside envelopes to help tell the story.
Yet the true magic of Peepo! lies in its simplicity. Where admittedly terrific children’s books by Julia Donaldson use fantastical settings to appeal to a young child’s imagination, be they Gruffalos in forests or people made from sticks, Peepo! and the book that followed, The Baby’s Catalogue, makes a virtue of the familiar and thus, the reassuring.
A trip to the park with baby’s two elder sisters; Mum dozing in a chair; bathtime, in an iron tub, naturally – this is the 1940s and in Janet’s warmly fuzzy illustrations, this intergenerational family dry their clothes on the grate.
**Read more here:** [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/allan-ahlberg-peepo/](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/authors/allan-ahlberg-peepo/)
The each peach pear plum guy died? No 🙁