Peter Rabbit (2018) — Sony's live-action and CGI comedy · Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway (2021) — the sequel · The Tales of Beatrix Potter (1971) — the Royal Ballet danced the tales in animal masks
There's no reading-order question here, because these aren't two versions of one story; they're two different things sharing a rabbit. The tales belong to ages three to seven, on a lap, years before the film's slapstick would even appeal. If your family watches the movie and enjoys it, nothing is harmed. Just don't let it stand in for Potter, whose actual books are quieter, stranger, and made with a care the film isn't attempting.
The 2018 film invents a young McGregor heir, a romance, and an escalating prank war with electric fences and exploding burrows. It's a loud, modern family comedy that borrows Potter's characters; almost nothing in it happens in her books.
The film plays peril for slapstick. Potter states it once, flatly: Peter's father was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor. No wink, no rimshot. Small children handle that plain sentence remarkably well, precisely because nobody is laughing at it.
On screen Peter wisecracks. On the page he doesn't speak at all in his own tale; he runs, loses his shoes, hides in a watering can, and goes to bed with camomile tea. The quiet is the charm.
More than 250 of her paintings, one facing nearly every page, each doing half the storytelling. A child who can't read yet can follow every tale from the pictures alone, which no film can replicate on a lap.
The film is Peter's story. The book carries Jemima Puddle-Duck trusting a fox, two bad mice wrecking a doll's house, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle's laundry, and a squirrel who taunts an owl once too often.
A rabbit is 'implored to exert himself.' She never simplified her words for children, and children repay her by absorbing vocabulary mid-chase without noticing.
Each tale is about a thousand words: one lap, one bedtime, one complete story with real danger and a safe landing. The film asks for ninety minutes; the book asks for ten, at exactly the age when ten is what you have.
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