It is **Peep's very first day at Meadow School**, and her tummy is so full of butterflies she has not touched a single crumb of her breakfast. 🥚

*Poppy* says it out loud: "Today is Peep's very first day at Meadow School, and she has not touched a single crumb of her breakfast." And on the walk up the meadow path, *Percy* gives the feeling its name. 💛 **"That wobbly feeling in your tummy has a name, Peep. We all call them butterflies, and every single one of us gets them."**

At the gate they meet *Miss Fern**, the kindly deer who teaches at Meadow School, and she asks absolutely nothing of her: 🦌 ***"Good morning, Peep. I am Miss Fern. You do not have to do anything at all today except look around and see what you think."**

And Peep *freezes anyway.* She goes very small and quiet behind Poppy's boot, and will not move.

So the friends do the only genuinely useful thing there is — *each one tells her about their own first day.* 🐿️ *Tuck* hid behind a very small bush for nearly a whole hour, and nobody minded even slightly. 🐭 *Milo* did not say one single word all morning and discovered that listening turned out to be perfectly allowed. 🦡 *Bo* brought a small smooth stone from home in his pocket and held onto it all day — "it helped enormously." 🐦 *Wren* sang the whole way there to keep her courage up, and by lunchtime had quite forgotten to be frightened.

Not one of them tells her to be brave. *Poppy* makes the smallest possible offer instead: 💚 **"You do not have to feel brave yet, Peep. You only have to walk as far as that little green door."**

So she walks as far as the little green door. And Miss Fern, who has not hurried her once, says exactly the right thing: **"There you are. Come and sit wherever you like, and if you would rather just watch, that is quite alright."**

And then the day simply *happens.* ✨ She watches. She edges closer. She hops up onto a little wooden chair. And by the time the afternoon light goes long and the friends come back up the path to collect her, *she does not want to come home.* 💕

*Percy* thinks this is the funniest and best thing imaginable: **"We came to collect you, Peep, and you do not want to come home. That is the best possible news."**

And *Grandpa Burr* puts the whole of it into one sentence: 🦔 **"Every new thing wobbles at the start. That is not a sign you should not be there. It is only a sign it is new."**

A warm, gentle, very small story about *first-day nerves* — and about the particular kindness of somebody telling you they were frightened once too. 🌿

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🐦 The lesson: Every new thing wobbles at the start. That is not a sign you should not be there — it is only a sign that it is new.
🦌 Meet the friends: Percy, Poppy, *Peep the hatchling**, **Miss Fern the teacher* (new!), Tuck, Milo the mouse, Bo the badger, Wren & Grandpa Burr.
🎬 Tomorrow on Percy & Poppy: *The Wrong Answer Club* — Miss Fern starts a club where you have to bring one gloriously wrong answer, and hands shoot up for the very first time!

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