The Velveteen Rabbit

Williams, Margery. The Velveteen Rabbit. Illustrated by William Nicholson. Avon Books, 1922. 32 pages.

Margery Williams’ book, The Velveteen Rabbit, told from the perspective of a third person narrator, is about a toy rabbit’s journey to “realness”. In this book, the main character is a little toy velveteen rabbit. The rabbit talks to the Skin Horse, who is considered the wisest toy in the nursery since he has been around the longest. Before talking to the skin horse, the velveteen rabbit thought that to be real, you had to be able to move, but the skin horse told him that realness comes when a child really loves you, not if you can move. Through a series of events, the boy begins to love the velveteen rabbit, and the rabbit begins to realize that he is real. When the boy falls sick and the rabbit is discarded, he sheds a single tear that brings about a fairy. This fairy tells him that before, he was real to the boy, but now, he will be a real, living, breathing rabbit. The velveteen rabbit then became a live bunny and ran off to play with the other rabbits

“You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one.”

This book, unlike most children’s picture books, is mostly comprised of text. There are a few pictures to support the text throughout the book, but they do not serve a primary function like they might in other books. The book is very well written, and the use of dialogue makes it more relatable for children. The Illustrations are very unique and simple, but they do a good job of portraying certain important scenes. The Illustrator used very few colors, keeping the theme the same throughout all of the pictures. While the illustrations did not always portray the emotions of the characters, they give readers a better idea of what the characters are supposed to look like, and this can help children visualize the scenes better.

Aside from being a moving story that can be enjoyed by children and adults alike, this book also can be used to teach philosophy to children. This book deals with a branch of philosophy called epistemology. The questions that this book might raise in the mind of a child are the questions that the velveteen rabbit asks throughout the book. What makes something real? Am I real? What do you need to do to become real? This book answers those questions in a somewhat moral manner. While the ending of the book implies that you need to be a living, breathing, thing to be considered real, we also know that one can achieve realness through the affirmations of others. In the middle of the book, the rabbit was real because the boy loved him. At the end of the book, the rabbit became an actual rabbit, thus making him real. These contrasting viewpoints on reality are part of what makes this book such a great example to teach children.