‘Peace at Last’ by Jill Murphy is a fantastic engaging picture book for children. This book has been a household favourite for many years, and it certainly has not lost its vibrancy and charm to entertain. It is illustrated with large, one-page drawings and therefore is great to hold up when it is being read. It has simple and compound sentence structures, and repetitive vocabulary, which would give an early reader confidence. It would provoke many conversations between pupils, as every child would want to talk about their own bed time habits. It has a simple plot which children can easily relate to… a frustrating night of struggling to fall asleep, and the adventure which can unfold. = When read out loud, this book will appeal to 3-4yr olds, but is a good read for children themselves in EYFS or KS1 classes. Eventually, Daddy Bear finds ‘peace at last in sleep’ when he finds Mummy Bear sleeping quietly many hours later. The book works well when it is read out loud, as the children can join in with the noises from the ‘drip drip’ of the tap, to the ‘twit twoo’ of the owl. As a result Daddy Bear fills the subsequent pages trying to find a quiet place to sleep, and more often than not, failing to do so. Mummy Bear falls straight to sleep… accompanied by a rather large snore. Every page is full of noises for readers and children to join in together, a great way to end the day! We enter the book at bedtime in the Bear household, with Daddy Bear, Mummy Bear and Baby Bear all going up the stairs to bed. She now lives in Cornwall with her son Charlie.= P eace at Last is a brilliant book for interactive story times in EYFS or KS1 classrooms. The Large Family stories are Jill’s other best known stories, picture books telling of the domestic chaos of a family of elephants.

Mildred Hubble has gone on to several more adventures, most recently The Worst Witch and the Wishing Star, and even her own TV show. Jill became a freelance author and illustrator and many more wonderful books followed. When Jill was twenty four, The Worst Witch was finally published, and was an instant best-seller. Three big London publishers turned it down so Jill put it in a drawer and went off to work in a children’s home and as a nanny. At only eighteen she finished her first novel, The Worst Witch, which was based heavily on her own experiences at the convent school.

Jill went to a strict convent, and left at sixteen to attend both Chelsea and Croydon art schools. “My earliest memory (my mum tells me I was two), is sitting on the kitchen floor surrounded by sheets of drawings.” By the age of six she was stapling her own little storybooks together. From a very early age she was drawing and writing stories.

Peace at last book