The Spectacular Tale of Peter Rabbit
A travelling fun-fair has come to the village. Peter and Benjamin cannot resist the bright lights, the music, the smell of toffee. They sneak out to look. A roller-coaster carriage tips Peter into the air. A grumpy little girl scoops him up and refuses to let go. Benjamin must mount a daring rescue from the very top of the helter-skelter — *the spectacular* — to bring his cousin safely home.
Emma Thompson's third and final continuation. The fairground setting is unlike anything in Beatrix's own books — but the cadence, the humour, and the small bravery are Beatrix's. The book closes the trilogy with Peter and Benjamin grown a little older, and an old friend's village a little wider.
Together, the three Emma Thompson tales form a modern complement to Beatrix's twenty-three originals. The estate has invited no other writer to continue the world.
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- First edition
- 2014, Frederick Warne & Co.
- Author
- Emma Thompson
- Illustrator
- Eleanor Taylor
- Setting
- A travelling fun-fair, near Sawrey
- Position
- Third and final of the Emma Thompson continuations
Curiosities
- ❦The fairground is the only setting in any Peter Rabbit book — original or modern — that lies outside the natural world. Beatrix never wrote one.
- ❦The "spectacular" of the title refers both to the helter-skelter and to the rescue mounted from its top.
- ❦The trilogy closes a quiet circle: a journey out (Further), a winter at home (Christmas), and a near-disaster avoided (Spectacular).
- ❦Emma Thompson stepped away after this book, leaving the world to Beatrix and Beatrix alone — exactly as the estate had hoped.
- ❦Eleanor Taylor's illustrations of the fair — wooden carousels, painted ponies, striped tents — are based on real early-twentieth-century English fairground photography.
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