the velveteen rabbit by margery williams bianco

Two decades later, and by then a widely respected author, translator, and critic of children’s books, Bianco would scorn attempts to draw a line around writing for young people, preferring to refer more expansively to what she called “imaginative literature” intended for all ages. Bianco, already the author of five unsuccessful novels for adults, had once longed to be a writer of serious fiction, but by the time she wrote The Velveteen Rabbit, she had not published a book in eight years. Yet The Velveteen Rabbit was always more than a children’s book. Perhaps you read it when you were small perhaps you have read it to someone smaller. All the while, it has remained a humble bedtime story across the English-speaking world. This year, Doubleday released a 100th-anniversary edition with stunning new art by award-winning illustrator Erin Stead. It is frequently adapted for the stage, and Meryl Streep received a Grammy nomination in 1986 for a recording of it she made with the pianist George Winston.

Dozens of illustrators have reimagined it, including Maurice Sendak three years before Where the Wild Things Are. First published in book form in 1922 by a little-known novelist named Margery Williams Bianco, it has now been in print for a century, selling over a million copies in the U.S. This is the plot of that beloved classic of children’s literature The Velveteen Rabbit. He cries a tear - a real tear - and from the fallen tear there grows a flower, and out of the flower steps a beautiful fairy, and the fairy transforms him into a real rabbit at last.

Shivering on the trash heap, the little rabbit wonders what it all was for. But when the boy gets sick with scarlet fever, the doctor orders the rabbit to be burned alongside the other germ-ridden playthings. Eventually, he gets his wish: The boy plays with him all spring and summer, and the rabbit doesn’t mind that his coat has grown shabby and his stuffing is coming out, because he knows he is Real to the boy. From a wise old toy, the rabbit learns that when a child loves you for a long time, you become Real, and the rabbit yearns to be Real himself. A little boy receives a stuffed rabbit for Christmas. The first published version of The Velveteen Rabbit appeared in Harper’s Bazaar in 1921.

The velveteen rabbit by margery williams bianco