A gift book that is actually a picture book. The rhyme runs the length of the story, warm and unhurried, and it says the thing a small child means but cannot get out: that their mother is the safe place.

The illustrations are Beatrix Potter's own, and that is the reason this one is kept rather than passed on. Her rabbits still have the specific, slightly anxious dignity nobody has managed to copy in the century since. Here they are set into a contemporary layout with modern typography and generous white space, so the artwork reads clearly to a child raised on today's picture books rather than looking like a museum reproduction.

It works as a Mother's Day gift and it works better as an ordinary Tuesday night book, which is the argument for buying it in March instead of May. A hardcover with a short, rhythmic text is the kind of book that gets requested at bedtime for a year.

Give it to a new mother, a grandmother, or the aunt who has been doing the raising. The Peter Rabbit name on the cover does the rest of the work.