There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.
Originally published in 1922, The Velveteen Rabbit (or How Toys Become Real) is a classic children’s story by the English-American writer Margery Williams Bianco. A beautiful story with deep insights in to life, relations and what it means to be real, ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ can make even adult readers feel emotional.
The story of the toy rabbit who longed to be real
On a Christmas day, a boy gets a cute velveteen rabbit as a gift. It was a simple but beautiful toy, made out of velveteen. The boy received so many presents that Christmas, and after a brief instance of attraction, the boy forgets about the rabbit. The boy plays with more expensive toys, while the rabbit is left in the boy’s nursery all forgotten for a period of time.
The other toys, the more expensive and more complex, mechanical one’s, in the boy’s nursery, snubs the velveteen rabbit because he was a simple toy made out of cloth and stuffed sawdust. He was not expensive or he was not sophisticated like the mechanical toys, who thought themselves as superior and looked down upon other toys with disdain. They pretended they were REAL.
The velveteen rabbit, who was so humble and simple, didn’t even knew there were real rabbits in the world, and thought that everything had sawdust stuffing inside. The derisive comments from the other toys made him feel so insignificant and commonplace. The only toy to be kind to him was the skin horse, the oldest toy in the boy’s nursery. He was shabby in appearance with bald patches on his skin, and he was a long used and long loved toy. The skin horse, who was wise and experienced, tells the rabbit about nursery magic and how the love from their young owners can transform toys into real.
The scene where the skin horse explains the velveteen rabbit about ‘what is real’ is a fine example of the power that Margery Williams conjures up through simple words.
” Real isn’t how you are made, ” said the Skin Horse. ” It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real. ”
“ Does it hurt? ” asked the Rabbit.
“ Sometimes, ” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ” When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt. ”
” Does it happen all at once, like being wound up, ” he asked, ” or bit by bit? ”
“It doesn’t happen all at once, ” said the Skin Horse. “ You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand. ”
The velveteen rabbit was so smitten by the notion of nursery magic that he longed to become real. A chance incident brings the velveteen rabbit and the boy together and soon the rabbit becomes the boy’s most loved toy and best friend. The happy moments that the rabbit spends playing with the boy, becomes the most precious thing for him. The rest of the story melancholically narrates how the nursery magic happens for the velveteen rabbit. The story of the velveteen rabbit will show young readers how a person becomes real – the magical transformation of the toys into real within the story – through love and insight gained over ages.
While reading the story, young readers will come across the concepts of loss and sadness, and will learn that both happiness and sadness are all part of our life. The narrations, of unconditional love from the boy towards his favorite toy, the velveteen rabbit, the descriptions of rabbit’s adoration of the boy, and the sentiments that happen to the rabbit because of his longing to become real, are powerful enough to make the reader choke with emotions.
The story tells us how plain unconditional love can allow one to surpass the feelings of ridicule, abandonment, sadness and rejection from others. This is a perfect children’s book that is suitable for a parent-child read-along session and is highly recommended even for adult readers.
