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.