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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many words did Dr. Seuss limit himself to in Green Eggs and Ham, to win a bet?
50
The whole book really does use just 50 distinct words, and 49 of them have only one syllable; the odd one out is 'anywhere'.
Q 02Which Random House publisher bet Dr. Seuss $50 he could not write Green Eggs and Ham with so few words?
Bennett Cerf
Seuss later insisted the book had no deeper meaning at all: 'the only meaning was that Bennett Cerf, my publisher, bet me fifty bucks.'
Q 03The finished text of The Cat in the Hat contains how many different words?
236
Geisel wrote it as a more entertaining reading primer, choosing from a school word list, and claimed he built the story around the first two rhyming words he found: cat and hat.
Q 04In Where the Wild Things Are, what is the name of the boy in the wolf suit?
Max
He is sent to bed without supper, sails to the island of the Wild Things, and comes home to find his dinner waiting, still hot.
Q 05Sendak's Wild Things replaced which animals from his original idea, which he couldn't draw?
Horses
The monsters that replaced them were caricatures of Sendak's own aunts and uncles, drawn from memories of their noisy weekly visits to his Brooklyn home.
Q 06In Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, what does the Once-ler knit from the tufts of Truffula Trees?
A Thneed
The Once-ler sells his first one for $3.98 and insists it is a 'Fine-Something-That-All-People-Need', which is where the trouble starts.
Q 07In Charlotte's Web, what is the name of the pig whose life Charlotte saves?
Wilbur
He is the runt of a litter of eleven, spared from the axe when eight-year-old Fern Arable begs her father for his life.
Q 08What are the first two words Charlotte weaves into her web to save the pig?
Some Pig
She follows it with 'Terrific', 'Radiant' and finally 'Humble', a word the rat Templeton finds on a scrap of newspaper at the fair.
Q 09Who illustrated both Charlotte's Web and Stuart Little for E. B. White?
Garth Williams
Stuart Little was his very first work for children; he went on to draw the Little House books and Beverly Cleary's Henry Huggins stories too.
Q 10In E. B. White's Stuart Little, the title character is a human child who looks exactly like which animal?
A mouse
Stuart stands just over two inches tall, and the plot turns on his friendship with a canary named Margalo whom he protects from the family cat, Snowbell.
Q 11Why do bunnies, not humans, populate the great green room in Goodnight Moon?
Hurd drew rabbits better than people
Margaret Wise Brown gave Clement Hurd almost no direction, and the pair once planned to publish under the pen names 'Memory Ambrose' and 'Hurricane Jones'.
Q 12Which institution refused to stock Goodnight Moon for 25 years because its children's librarian hated it?
New York Public Library
The book sold only 6,000 copies in its first season in 1947; the librarian in question was the hugely influential Anne Carroll Moore.
Q 13After his Saturday feast gives him a stomach ache, what does the Very Hungry Caterpillar eat on Sunday?
Q 21Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in which country?
Wales
His parents were Norwegian immigrants, his first language was Norwegian, and he was named after the polar explorer who reached the South Pole.
Q 22Dahl was named after which famous Norwegian?
Roald Amundsen
Amundsen had beaten Scott to the South Pole in 1911, five years before Dahl was born to Norwegian parents in Cardiff.
Q 23Roald Dahl illustrator Quentin Blake was the first holder of which British post in 1999?
Children's Laureate
He also drew the first Dr. Seuss book that Seuss did not illustrate himself, Great Day for Up! in 1974.
A green leaf
Saturday's ten-item binge included a pickle, a slice of salami and a piece of cherry pie; Eric Carle punched real holes through the pages to show where he had eaten.
Q 14Eric Carle's first picture book was a 1967 collaboration with author Bill Martin Jr. on which title?
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?
Martin spotted a lobster Carle had collaged from tissue paper for an allergy-medicine advert and asked him to illustrate the book.
Q 15Beatrix Potter first wrote The Tale of Peter Rabbit in an 1893 letter to whom?
Her former governess's son
Publishers turned it down, so Potter printed it privately in 1901; Frederick Warne & Co picked it up the following year.
Q 16What does Peter Rabbit lose while escaping from Mr. McGregor's garden?
His jacket and shoes
It is the second set he has lost in a fortnight, and Mr. McGregor uses them to dress a scarecrow; Peter is put to bed with chamomile tea.
Q 17What are the names of Peter Rabbit's three well-behaved sisters?
Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-tail
While Peter raids the garden, his sisters go down the lane to pick blackberries and get bread, milk and blackberries for supper.
Q 18Beatrix Potter used her book earnings to buy Hill Top Farm in which part of England?
The Lake District
She became a prize-winning breeder of Herdwick sheep and left nearly all her land to the National Trust, helping create the national park.
Q 19The real bear that gave Winnie-the-Pooh his name was itself named after which city?
Winnipeg
Canadian soldier Harry Colebourn bought the black bear cub in 1914 and left her at London Zoo, where young 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
So the world's most famous drawings of Christopher Robin's bear are actually a portrait of a different teddy belonging to Shepard's son Graham.
Q 24How many Golden Tickets does Willy Wonka hide in Wonka Bars in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Five
Charlie's first attempt, a birthday-present bar, turns up nothing; he finds his ticket with a coin discovered in the snow.
Q 25Which child finds the very first Golden Ticket in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
Augustus Gloop
He is also the first to leave the tour, sucked up a pipe after falling into the chocolate river.
Q 26In Roald Dahl's The BFG, what is the name of the orphan girl the giant carries off?
Sophie
She and the BFG appeared together on Royal Mail stamps in 2012, and the giant's name stands for Big Friendly Giant.
Q 27Who is the terrifying headmistress in Roald Dahl's Matilda?
Miss Trunchbull
A former hammer-thrower, she hurls a girl over the playground fence by her pigtails and locks pupils in a cupboard called the Chokey.
Q 28In James and the Giant Peach, which animal escaped from London Zoo eats James's parents?
A rhinoceros
That leaves James with the dreadful 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
Sales of the sweet reportedly rose after the 2005 film, and the enchanted version makes anyone who eats it crave more and more.