Peter Rabbit Trivia
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100 free Peter Rabbit trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 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 100 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 100 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 02Which film-maker asked Potter in the 1930s if he could make a Peter Rabbit film, and was told no?
Walt Disney
Walt Disney went away empty-handed: Potter wrote that she was 'not very hopeful about the result', doubting her pictures would survive being enlarged, and Disney never did make a Potter film.
Q 03What was the first piece of Peter Rabbit merchandise, made and patented by Potter herself in 1903?
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 04Because women could not attend, a man read Potter's 1897 paper to the Linnean Society on which subject?
Fungi
Fungi fascinated her: after a decade of drawing them she worked out how their spores germinate, but Kew's director had brushed her off and the paper itself is now lost.
Q 05How was Potter's diary written, unread until Leslie Linder worked it out in 1958?
A secret code
A secret code of her own devising hid the journal until Linder spotted 'XVI' and '1793' on one page, guessed at the execution of Louis XVI and unlocked most of her alphabet from that single line.
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; in the film Thomas McGregor works there until he loses a promotion to the managing director's nephew and is fired.
Q 10Hiding from Mr McGregor in the tool-shed, Peter jumps into what, only for a sneeze to give him away?
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 Peter Rabbit 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 shot into flower send them to sleep, and Mr McGregor counts all six into a sack, meaning to sell them and buy himself tobacco.
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, after first insisting on black and white to keep the book cheap for children; she chose the new Hentschel three-colour process to print her watercolours.
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 to a sick five-year-old, Noel Moore, who kept the letter safely enough for her to borrow it back years later and make it a book.
Q 15Which Lakeland estate, where the Potters summered from 1885, has the kitchen garden Potter credited as Mr McGregor's?
Lingholm
Lingholm's kitchen garden is the one Potter credited as her first inspiration, though for the sequel, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny, she drew the gardens of Fawe Park next door.
Q 16In The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Peter's new blue jacket has buttons made of which metal?
Brass
Brass buttons catch in a gooseberry net and nearly cost Peter his life; he escapes without the jacket, which Mr McGregor hangs up as a scarecrow.
Q 17What did Hardwicke Rawnsley do to The Tale of Peter Rabbit 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, for a story that at least six publishers turned down before Potter paid to print it herself.
Q 19Which Peter Rabbit product did Potter design in 1904 that her publisher left unpublished for years?
A board game
A board game, The Game of Peter Rabbit, went to Warne in December 1904 with her note that 'the chances are strongly in favour of Peter'; the firm issued its own version only in 1919.
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?
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 drags him to the bottom of the pond but swallows only his galoshes; Jeremy hops home and dines on roasted grasshopper with a newt called Sir Isaac Newton.
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 an old British word for one, just as 'tod' is a Scots and northern word for 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 most of her first 47 years; taught there by governesses, she kept a schoolroom menagerie of mice, rabbits and other animals brought back from family holidays.