You wouldn’t find books like these around today. I mean, look at it. There’s two half naked kids on the front cover asking you to play with them. Certainly an innocent enough book in those days, but today is likely to get you banged up on paedophile charges just for owning one.
The Peter and Jane series of books was designed to teach young kids how to read. There were 36 books in total, 12 in each graded series (a), (b) and (c). The (a) series gradually introduces and repeats new words. The parallel (b) series gives the needed further repetition of these words, and apparently the (c) series runs in parallel with the (a) series, although only on the third Tuesday on alternate months providing it is not a leap year, in which case it would be the first Wednesday.
Now, it is established that Jane loves the dog. Occasionally Jane may have a bit of a mood on and will only ‘like’ the dog, but generally Jane loves the dog. The question is whether or not the dog loves Jane, and if so does Peter know about this. What relationship is Peter to Jane? Is it a case that the dog actually does love Jane, or is he just using her? If this is the case, then Peter should definitely step in and kick the dogs butt.
Saying that though, Peter does have a habit of getting balls stuck up trees, so he might not be the best candidate to send into battle with the dog. The issue is that Peter also loves the dog, although hopefully not in the same way.
So, we have a situation here where Jane is in love with the dog. The dog, however, is just using Jane. Peter may or may not be related to Jane, so depending upon this factor and whether or not they live on the Isle Of Sheppey, depends on whether Peter will actually gain from stepping in and kicking the hell out of the dog. Or should he just go back to stuffing balls up trees?
You also have the factor where Peter may prefer the dog to Jane, in which case would Peter actually benefit from beating the life out of Jane. Probably not due to the fact that the dogs feelings towards Peter are unknown at this stage, although saying that dogs aren’t generally fussy.
In conclusion, these books teached us all to read, caused unnatural feelings towards dogs and were also the cause of many a ball being stranded up a tree.