Private Peaceful won the 2004 Red House Children's Book Award—an award judged entirely by a panel of children with no adults—beating Lola Rose by Jacqueline Wilson and Lirael by Garth Nix.[15] Morpurgo said that he believed the ubiquity of war at the time of the award, such as the Iraq War and commemorations of D-Day, meant that the depiction of the First World War resonated with children.[16] Private Peaceful was shortlisted for both the 2004 Whitbread children's book award and the Carnegie Medal. It won the Blue Peter Book Award and came first in the "Book I couldn't put down" category.[17] Diane Samuels of The Guardian wrote that the novel has a gentle but persistent and ominous pace. She wrote that the tone of the prose is more reminiscent of an elderly man recounting his childhood and early life, rather than the direct perspective of a young man, which makes the prose feel distant. Morpurgo interviewed three men in their eighties to gather insight for the story, which Samuels said may have led to a sense of "literary conceit".[4]
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