Prokofiev wrote this in 1936 to teach children the instruments of the orchestra, and the trick has never been bettered: every character is played by one instrument, so a child learns the sound by learning who it is. Peter is the violins and all the strings. The bird is the flute. The duck is the oboe, the cat the clarinet, the grandfather the bassoon, the wolf the French horns, and the hunters are the kettledrums and the big bass drum.

The CD is the reason to buy this edition rather than another. It is a full orchestral recording by the Cincinnati Pops under Erich Kunzel with word for word narration by Peter A. Thomas, made for this book, so a child can follow the page and hear the instrument arrive at the same moment. That simultaneity is the whole lesson.

Janet Schulman's retelling follows the story but gives both the wolf and the argumentative duck a kinder ending than the original, which matters if you are reading it to a three year old at bedtime. Peter Malone paints it in the manner of old Russian panel painting: a village of orange roofs, a meadow seen from above like a map, the grandfather asleep under a quilt with the cat on it.

Hardcover with an audio CD, 40 pages, 10.31 by 8.31 in, retold by Janet Schulman and illustrated by Peter Malone. Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Penguin Random House, 2004. ISBN-13 9780375824302. Publisher age guidance: 3 to 7 years.