Where's My Mummy?
Where's My Mummy? by Carolyn Crimi takes about 4 minutes to read aloud (427 words, about 2 sentences a page), and it lands best with children aged 3-5.
Measured read-aloud timeabout 4 minutes
- Words
- 427
- Sentences a page
- 2
- Re-read tolerance
- 4/5survives a fortnight on repeat
- Vocabulary
- 2/5everyday words
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The useful verdict
Why Where's My Mummy? works
Little Baby Mummy is playing hide-and-seek and refuses to go to bed, and meets a ghost, a bat and a vampire on the way - each of whom is politely unhelpful. It is a bedtime-stalling book in Halloween dress, and the pun in the title is the joke a four-year-old finally gets and then repeats for a week.
Before you buy it
The monsters are all drawn friendly and the tone is affectionate, but the setting is a dark graveyard at night for most of the book. Worth previewing if your child is already wary of the dark.
Themes: Halloween, bedtime, hide-and-seek, monsters, mothers.
Same shape, new story
Books like Where's My Mummy?
Matched by length, refrain, sentence density, and listener—not just subject.
Straight answers
Questions parents ask about Where's My Mummy?
- How long does it take to read Where's My Mummy? aloud?
- About 4 minutes at an unhurried pace, from a word count of 427. Reading it fast shaves perhaps a third off; stopping for questions on every page can double it.
- What age is Where's My Mummy? actually for?
- Ages 3-5 in our testing, which is narrower than the publisher's range. With 2 sentences a page and vocabulary at 2 out of 5, it asks for that much attention span and no more.
- Does Where's My Mummy? survive being read on repeat?
- Yes. It survives a fortnight of nightly repeats, which is the real test.
- Is Where's My Mummy? a good book for a child who will not sit still?
- It helps that it rhymes, and it has a refrain a child can join in with, and it asks the child questions to answer out loud. Those three features are what keep a wriggling toddler listening, far more than the subject matter does.
- Will my child memorise Where's My Mummy??
- Probably, and fast. The book leans on a repeated refrain, and at 4 out of 5 for re-read tolerance it survives the nightly repeats that get a book memorised. Expect your child to chant the pattern back before they can actually read.
- Can a beginning reader read Where's My Mummy? on their own?
- It is closer than most picture books. With 2 sentences a page and plain vocabulary (2 out of 5), a confident early reader can attempt it, though it is written to be read aloud first.
- What themes does Where's My Mummy? cover?
- We tag it with Halloween, bedtime, hide-and-seek, monsters and mothers. Those are the threads that actually run through the book, not just the ones on the cover, which is how it earns its place on our themed lists rather than a keyword match.