Children's Books
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100 free Children's Books trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
50 free Children's Books trivia questions with answers. Some books stay with you for life, and this quiz is built from them: Dr. Seuss and Roald Dahl, Beatrix Potter and Maurice Sendak, Charlotte's Web, Goodnight Moon, Winnie-the-Pooh, Narnia, Harry Potter, Percy Jackson and Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Alongside the characters and plots you know, there are questions about the authors and illustrators behind them: the $50 bet that produced Green Eggs and Ham, the bear that actually posed for Pooh, and the librarian who kept Goodnight Moon out of New York's libraries for 25 years. It is written for kids and grown-ups to play together. About half the questions are ones a confident young reader can answer, the rest reward the parents, teachers and librarians who have read these books aloud a hundred times. There is nothing scary or grown-up in here. Every answer is checked against a primary source, mainly the encyclopedia article on each book or author, and the exact sentence that confirms it appears after you answer, so any family argument can be settled on the spot.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Dr. Seuss won a bet by writing which book with just 50 different words?
Green Eggs and Ham
Green Eggs and Ham uses exactly 50 different words, and 'anywhere' is the only one with more than one syllable.
Q 02Which Random House co-founder lost a book-writing bet to Dr. Seuss?
Bennett Cerf
Bennett Cerf bet Seuss $50 that he couldn't write an engaging children's book using only 50 different words.
Q 03Which Seuss book grew from a school word list?
The Cat in the Hat
The Cat in the Hat: Houghton Mifflin's William Spaulding challenged Geisel to write a primer children couldn't put down, and it uses just 236 different words.
Q 04In Where the Wild Things Are, what is the name of the boy in the wolf suit?
Max
Max, sent to bed without supper, sails to the island of the Wild Things and is crowned their king, then returns home to find his hot supper waiting for him.
Q 05Sendak's Wild Things replaced which animals from his original idea, which he couldn't draw?
Horses
The book began as Where the Wild Horses Are until Sendak admitted he could not draw horses; the 'things' he drew instead were caricatures of his own aunts and uncles from their noisy weekly visits in Brooklyn.
Q 06In Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, what does the Once-ler knit from the tufts of Truffula Trees?
A Thneed
The Thneed, 'a Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need', sells for $3.98 to the first passer-by, and the Once-ler's factory soon strips away every Truffula Tree.
Q 07In Charlotte's Web, what is the name of the pig whose life Charlotte saves?
Wilbur
Wilbur is the runt of a litter of eleven, spared from the axe when eight-year-old Fern Arable begs her father for his life and raises him herself.
Q 08What are the first two words Charlotte weaves into her web to save the pig?
Some Pig
'Some Pig' comes first; Charlotte follows it with 'Terrific', 'Radiant' and finally 'Humble', a word the rat Templeton finds on a scrap of newspaper at the county fair.
Q 09Who illustrated both Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little for E. B. White?
Garth Williams
Garth Williams drew both; Stuart Little (1945) was his first children's book, and he went on to illustrate the Little House series and George Selden's The Cricket in Times Square.
Q 10In E. B. White's Stuart Little, the title character is a human child who looks exactly like which animal?
A mouse
Stuart is described as looking very much like a mouse in every way and stands about two inches high; he later leaves home to search for his friend, the bird Margalo.
Q 11Why are the characters in Goodnight Moon rabbits rather than humans?
Hurd drew rabbits better than people
Hurd drew rabbits better than people, so the child and the old lady became bunnies, and a picture on the wall shows a scene from The Runaway Bunny.
Q 12Which institution refused to stock Goodnight Moon for 25 years because its children's librarian hated it?
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library, where the hugely influential Anne Carroll Moore had shaped children's services, kept it off its shelves until 1972; the book sold only about 6,000 copies in its first year.
Q 13After his Saturday feast gives him a stomach ache, what does the Very Hungry Caterpillar eat on Sunday?
Q 21Roald Dahl had Norwegian parents, but in which country was he born?
Wales
Wales: Dahl was born there, and his family later gave him what his granddaughter called a 'sort of Viking funeral'.
Q 22Roald Dahl's first children's book, written for Walt Disney, was about which creatures?
Gremlins
Gremlins: Dahl, himself an RAF pilot, based the story on air force folklore, but Disney's planned animated film was never made.
Q 23Roald Dahl illustrator Quentin Blake was the first holder of which British post in 1999?
Children's Laureate
Quentin Blake was the first Children's Laureate, serving from 1999 to 2001; the post was created by Michael Morpurgo and Ted Hughes, and Anne Fine succeeded him.
A green leaf
On Sunday he eats one nice green leaf and feels much better; Saturday's ten-item binge had included a pickle, a slice of salami and a piece of cherry pie.
Q 14Eric Carle illustrated which 1967 picture book written by Bill Martin Jr.?
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?: Martin asked Carle to illustrate it after spotting a red lobster Carle had made for a magazine advert.
Q 15Beatrix Potter first wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit in an 1893 letter to whom?
Her former governess's son
The picture letter went to Noel Moore, her former governess's son, and after publishers turned the book down Potter printed it privately in 1901.
Q 16What does Peter Rabbit lose while escaping from Mr. McGregor's garden?
His jacket and shoes
His jacket and shoes, the second set Peter has lost in a fortnight, end up on Mr. McGregor's scarecrow, and Peter is put to bed with camomile tea.
Q 17What are the names of Peter Rabbit's three well-behaved sisters?
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail go down the lane to gather blackberries while Peter raids the garden, and they get bread, milk and blackberries for supper.
Q 18Beatrix Potter used her earnings as an author to buy Hill Top Farm in which part of England?
The Lake District
Hill Top, in the Lake District village of Near Sawrey, was bought in 1905; Potter became a prize-winning Herdwick sheep breeder and left some 4,000 acres to the National Trust.
Q 19A. A. Milne's Pooh took part of his name from a London Zoo bear named after which city?
Winnipeg
Winnie was short for Winnipeg, Colebourn's home city; the Canadian veterinary officer bought the black bear cub in 1914 and left her at London Zoo, where Christopher Robin Milne visited her.
Q 20Illustrator E. H. Shepard based his drawings of Winnie-the-Pooh on which bear?
His son Graham's teddy, Growler
His son Graham's teddy, Growler, was Shepard's model, rather than the real Christopher Robin's bear that gave Pooh his name.
Q 24Which of Charlie Bucket's four grandparents goes with him on Willy Wonka's factory tour?
Grandpa Joe
Grandpa Joe, bedridden for years, leaps out of bed when Charlie finds the last Golden Ticket.
Q 25Which child finds the very first Golden Ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Augustus Gloop
Augustus Gloop, the greedy boy, finds the first ticket and is also the first to leave the tour, sucked up a pipe after tumbling into the chocolate river.
Q 26In Roald Dahl's The BFG, what is the name of the orphan girl the giant carries off?
Sophie
Sophie, snatched from her orphanage dormitory during the witching hour, was named after Dahl's granddaughter Sophie Dahl; the giant's name stands for Big Friendly Giant.
Q 27Who is the terrifying headmistress in Roald Dahl's Matilda?
Miss Trunchbull
Miss Trunchbull, a former Olympic hammer-thrower, hurls Amanda Thripp over the playground fence by her pigtails and locks pupils in a spiked cupboard called the Chokey.
Q 28In James and the Giant Peach, which animal escaped from London Zoo eats James's parents?
A rhinoceros
A rhinoceros that had escaped from London Zoo ate them in broad daylight on a crowded street, leaving James with Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker until a bag of magic crystals produces the peach.
Q 29What are the names of the three farmers who hunt Fantastic Mr Fox?
Boggis, Bunce and Bean
One fat, one short, one lean: Boggis keeps chickens, Bunce ducks and geese, and Bean turkeys and apples for cider.
Q 30In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, what treat does the White Witch use to tempt Edmund?
Turkish Delight
The White Witch conjures enchanted Turkish Delight, which makes whoever eats it crave more; Edmund eats several pounds and agrees to bring his siblings to her house.