Peepo!

To be true classics, children's books need to work on many levels which Peepo! most certainly does. A baby's eye view of home life in wartime, this board book edition is special in so many ways - it is wonderful to have such a good book in a more enduring form which will appeal to babies and toddlers but will also withstand life in school as a first history book. Peepo! also challenges older children - they initially dismissed it as a 'baby book' (even more so in this incarnation) but when they looked carefully there was a magic moment when they started to see that the setting is not contemporary and the fascination of discovering a whole new era set in. For me personally this book also celebrates the life and work of Janet Ahlberg, of the Ahlberg family as a whole, for the vignette on the back brings back the vibrancy and joy of this special family before she died.