The Velveteen Rabbit

by Margery Williams, Gennady Spirin (Illustrator)

Overview

A toy velveteen rabbit longs to be loved, and he begins to experience this when a boy adopts him as his favorite toy. But the rabbit wonders about “real” after meeting two rabbits with feet that pad softly on the ground and with noses that twitch. He learns that he can’t jump like the other rabbits and that he smells different. It’s only when a mysterious nursery fairy kisses him that the velveteen rabbit learns finally what it’s like to be real—not just to the boy, but to everyone. Gennady Spirin’s beguiling ink-and-watercolor illustrations bring new life to Margery Williams’s classic text, invigorating it with mystery and pathos before the rabbit is transformed by the fairy’s magical touch. A historical note is included.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781662522192
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	01/14/2025
Pages:	49
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)
Age Range:	6 - 8 Years

About the Author

Margery Williams, an English-American author who lived in Pennsylvania, achieved fame at age forty-one with the 1922 publication of The Velveteen Rabbit, an instant classic. She wrote a number of other books, including Winterbound, a runner-up for the 1937 Newbery Medal. Married with two children, she died in 1944 at the age of sixty-three.

Gennady Spirin grew up in a small town near Moscow and attended the Moscow Art School at the Academy of Art and at the Moscow Stroganov Institute. He has received five gold medals from the Society of Illustrators in New York City, the Golden Apple from the Bratislava International Biennial, and first prize at both the Bologna and Barcelona international book fairs. His work has appeared four times on the annual New York Times Ten Best Illustrated Books of the Year list. Mr. Spirin has illustrated many classic poems, songs, Bible stories, and tales, including The Night Before Christmas, The Twelve Days of Christmas, Jesus, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and Little Red Riding Hood. Now a U.S. citizen, he lives with his wife and three sons in Princeton, New Jersey.

Read an Excerpt

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"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 often happen 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."

Editorial Reviews

Lou Fancher sensitively adapts Margery Williams's The Velveteen Rabbit, illus. by Steve Johnson and Fancher, while maintaining the magic of the original. The inviting oil paintings ingeniously portray the boy's toy rabbit with button eyes, shaped like those of the real rabbits living in the nearby woods; as the stuffed rabbit is transformed by love, the artists seem to inject animation into its eyes, depicting its metamorphosis into a living, breathing being.

Publishers Weekly

PreS-Gr 2-Fancher's adaptation of Margery Williams's classic story sings with the magic of the original, while offering a shorter, more accessible version for modern children. The oil paintings have a luminous quality, the rich colors playing with dark and light to produce a timeless feel, perfectly complementing the text. The details of the boy's room, his toys, his Nana-all exist in an enchanted place somewhere between the past and the present. At last librarians have something to give parents who want to share the story of the toy that became real with their children, but are dismayed to find the original tale longer than they had remembered. An ideal adaptation of an old favorite.-Kathleen Kelly MacMillan, Maryland School for the Deaf, Columbia Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

In his note to the reader, Fancher (The Range Eternal, p. 1222, etc.) writes, "I’ve shortened the text to allow more room for the artwork," as an explanation for this abbreviated version of the beloved classic. Shortened indeed: Williams’s poetic passage introducing the Skin Horse has been reduced to: "The Skin Horse was old and wise, and he knew all about being Real." The rest is pared down to match, leaving a tale that does still—faintly—echo the original’s lyricism, but is less likely to lose the attention of, as Fancher puts it, "a wiggly two-year-old" being forced to listen to it. The art is, as promised, all full-paged and space-filling: quiet compositions in which the Velveteen Rabbit, the Boy, and other figures are large, soft-surfaced forms, viewed close-up, and from a child’s-eye level to enhance the feeling of intimacy. The tale’s more philosophical aspects will still elude most of the nursery school set, but sharing this summary may make some listeners more receptive to the Real story, when they’re old enough to appreciate it. On the other hand, perhaps they’ll think they’ve read it already. Why not just wait? (Picture book. 3-5)

Kirkus Reviews

"Well done. A good read-aloud for small groups of children."—School Library Journal.

From the Publisher