Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
10 questions No timer
50 free Peter Rabbit trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Peter Rabbit has been squeezing under Mr McGregor's gate since 1902, and the little blue-jacketed rabbit is still one of the best-known characters in the world. Beatrix Potter wrote him for a sick child, printed the first copies at her own expense, and then built a merchandising empire around him long before anyone else thought of it. These 50 questions cover the original tale and its publishing story, the sequels and the wider cast of kittens, ducks, squirrels and hedgehogs, Potter's life from her Victorian schoolroom to her Lake District farms, the coins and toys, and the TV series and the two big-screen films. The wording is plain and the early questions are easy, so it works for families, primary classes and anyone who grew up with the little white books. Harder questions for grown-up fans come later in the set.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Why does Peter Rabbit's mother warn her four children to stay out of Mr McGregor's garden?
Their father ended in a pie
Their father ended in a pie: Mrs McGregor baked him after he was caught there, which is why old Mrs Rabbit sends her children down the lane instead.
Q 02In 1936, which film-maker asked Potter if he could make a Peter Rabbit film, and was told no?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney went away empty-handed: Potter would not hand over her characters, and Disney never did make a Potter film.
Q 03In 1903, Potter made and patented the first ever piece of Peter Rabbit merchandise. What was it?
A soft toy
A soft toy of Peter, stitched and patented by Potter herself, was the first licensed character in history, a quarter of a century before Mickey Mouse.
Q 04In 1897 a man read Potter's science paper to the Linnean Society, because women could not attend. What was it about?
Fungi
Fungi fascinated her: she painted hundreds of them and worked out how their spores germinate, and in 1997 the Linnean Society apologised for how it had treated her.
Q 05Potter's teenage diary could not be read until Leslie Linder worked it out in 1958. How was it written?
A secret code
A secret code of her own devising hid the journal she kept from 1881 to 1897; Linder needed five years to crack it.
Q 06Which country has a full-size copy of Potter's farmhouse, and four in five people there know Peter Rabbit?
Japan
Japan has a copy of Potter's farmhouse and a Peter Rabbit theme park; children there meet the stories at school, and many later tour the Lake District.
Q 07In the 2018 film Peter Rabbit, which fruit do the rabbits throw at Thomas McGregor, who is allergic to it?
Blackberries
Blackberries land in his mouth and send him reaching for an EpiPen; allergy groups called it bullying and Sony said it regretted the scene.
Q 08To mark 150 years since Potter's birth, Peter Rabbit appeared in 2016 on which British coin?
50p
50p pieces carried Peter Rabbit from 2016, with more Potter characters following in 2017 and 2018, sending collectors rummaging through their change.
Q 09Which department store has sold Peter Rabbit goods since at least 1910 and employs Thomas McGregor in the 2018 film?
Harrods
Harrods listed Potter's characters in its catalogues from 1910, and the film's Thomas McGregor works in the Harrods toy department before he inherits the garden.
Q 10Hiding from Mr McGregor, Peter jumps into what, only to sneeze because it is half full of water?
A watering can
A watering can would have hidden him nicely had it been dry; the sneeze, 'Kertyschoo!', brings Mr McGregor running.
Q 11Which friendly birds beg Peter to exert himself when he is tangled in the gooseberry net by his jacket buttons?
Sparrows
Sparrows, three of them, fly to him in great excitement and implore him to exert himself, and he wriggles free just as Mr McGregor arrives with a sieve.
Q 12After publishers rejected it, how many copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit did Potter print at her own expense in 1901?
250
250 copies with black-and-white pictures were run off for family and friends; Warne's trade edition followed in October 1902 and had sold 50,000 by the end of 1903.
Q 13What did Frederick Warne ask Potter to do to her pen-and-ink pictures before publishing the tale in 1902?
Put them in colour
Q 21The six Flopsy Bunnies doze off on Mr McGregor's rubbish heap after eating which 'soporific' food?
Lettuces
Lettuces that have bolted into flower send them to sleep, and Mr McGregor pops all six into a sack, which is where a resourceful wood-mouse comes in.
Q 22Who gnaws a hole in Mr McGregor's sack to free the six Flopsy Bunnies while he is busy elsewhere?
Thomasina Tittlemouse
Thomasina Tittlemouse, a resourceful wood-mouse, nibbles the bunnies out, and the family refill the sack with rotten vegetables and a blacking brush for Mrs McGregor to find.
Q 23Jemima Puddle-Duck leaves the farm and meets a foxy gentleman because she wants to do what for herself?
Hatch her own eggs
Put them in colour she did, using the new Hentschel three-colour printing process, and the little painted pictures became the books' trademark.
Q 14Potter's own pet rabbit, the model she had in mind for the 1893 picture letter about four little rabbits, had what name?
Peter Piper
Peter Piper was the pet Potter had in mind when she wrote the 1893 picture letter 'about four little rabbits' for a sick five-year-old.
Q 15Which Lakeland estate, where the Potters summered from 1885, has the kitchen garden Potter credited as Mr McGregor's?
Lingholm
Lingholm's walled kitchen garden was the original; the family rented the estate most summers between 1885 and 1907, and Potter drew its woods and fells for later tales.
Q 16In Potter's pictures, Peter Rabbit's little blue jacket is fastened with buttons made of what metal?
Brass
Brass buttons fasten the jacket, which Mr McGregor ends up hanging on a scarecrow to frighten the birds off his seeds.
Q 17Before Warne took The Tale of Peter Rabbit, what did Hardwicke Rawnsley do to it while hawking it round publishers?
Rewrote it in verse
Rewrote it in verse he did, and Warne politely preferred Potter's prose; Rawnsley, a founder of the National Trust, had befriended the 16-year-old Potter on a Lake District holiday.
Q 18Roughly how many copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit have been sold, making it one of the best-selling books ever?
45 million
45 million copies in 36 languages is the count for the first tale alone; the six books with Peter in them top 150 million between them.
Q 19Which Peter Rabbit product did Potter design between 1903 and 1905 that never actually went on sale?
A board game
A board game about Peter was drawn up but never published, unlike the nursery wallpaper she designed in the same years.
Q 20In The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, what do the cousins carry home in Peter's handkerchief as a present for his mother?
Onions
Onions are the peace offering for Mrs Rabbit, and the boys also get Peter's lost clothes back from the scarecrow; a cat sits on the basket they hide under for five hours.
Hatch her own eggs is all she wants, since the farmer's wife keeps taking them; the gentleman lends her a shed full of feathers and asks her to fetch the herbs for a stuffing.
Q 24Which hedgehog washerwoman, living in a tiny cottage high in the fells, launders Lucie's lost handkerchiefs?
Mrs Tiggy-Winkle
Mrs Tiggy-Winkle was Potter's own pet, carried on her travels as a drawing model; the tale is set in the Newlands valley, where the real Lucie Carr lived.
Q 25Which cheeky character loses his tail after taunting Old Brown with riddles on Owl Island instead of gathering nuts?
Squirrel Nutkin
Squirrel Nutkin's brother Twinkleberry and the cousins pay the owl in mice, moles and minnows for the right to gather on his island, while Nutkin just plays and sings riddles.
Q 26What seizes Mr Jeremy Fisher from his leaf boat, then spits him out because his mackintosh tastes nasty?
A trout
A trout swallows him whole and keeps only his galoshes; Jeremy limps home to dine with Sir Isaac Newton and Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise.
Q 27Which tale, Potter's own favourite, has grateful mice finish a Mayor's embroidered wedding waistcoat overnight?
The Tailor of Gloucester
The Tailor of Gloucester grew from a true story: Gloucester tailor John Prichard found a waistcoat mysteriously finished, with a note reading 'No more twist'.
Q 28Who is the mother of Tom Kitten, Moppet and Mittens, who scrubs them up for a tea party?
Tabitha Twitchit
Tabitha Twitchit is 'affronted' when the kittens come back filthy and clothes-less, their outfits carried off by passing puddle-ducks, and sends them to bed.
Q 29What kind of animal is Tommy Brock, who steals the Flopsy Bunnies' babies in The Tale of Mr Tod?
A badger
A badger, because 'brock' is the old northern word for one, just as 'tod' means a fox; the two fall out when Tommy Brock naps in Mr Tod's bed.
Q 30Despite her Lake District fame, Potter was born in 1866 at 2 Bolton Gardens in which city?
London
London was home for her first 47 years; she grew up in a tall West Brompton home with a schoolroom full of pets and few friends her own age.