ages 4-8

This childrens book of the classic Beatrix Potter stories is hardbound in a large attractive cover. The illustrations are all wonderfull, and average three pictures per page next to the text which goes along with the scene. My now three year old loves this book.

My mother bought this for my kids, and this is an excellent gift for bedtime, or anytime stories for children. Classics like these are wonderfull to read to children so they can be passed on from generation to generation.

I had several of the small Beatrix Potter books as a child. The drawings and stories enchanted me, and the books were just the right size for my hands. This book is much bigger. It also includes more stories than my original collection--nineteen. It is easy to find the Peter Rabbit stories and some of the others in the small books--but some of the stories in this book (such as the wonderful "The Story Of A Fierce Bad Rabbit") I've never seen for sale in individual form. So, if you loved these stories as a child or if you want to introduce them to a child in your life, this large and beautiful book is a good choice. However, when I have children of my own I'll probably also buy a set of the small books, because I enjoyed them so much in that form myself.

To read any of Beatrix Potter's books without the benefit of her original drawings is to experience only half of the adventure. Trained as an artist and a naturalist, her drawings not only entertain little readers, but enchant adults who may be reading to their little ones.

Although the recommended age range is 4 to 8, I can speak from our own family's experience that 2 is not to young to start learning from the richness of both the prose and the illustrations; neither is 63 to old to be enchanted all over again by the animal characters drawn upon her days living in the pastoral region of Lake Windermere, England. One can picture Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddleduck and friends in the ponds, woods and hedgerows of that gentle region.