I don’t have a particular time and place associated with my memories of The Velveteen Rabbit, but the story was firmly a part of my childhood, as it was for many before me… I hadn’t realised how old this book was, first published in 1922! The text was written by Margery Williams and it was illustrated, most famously, by William Nicholson. Anyone you know have an original edition? Check out how much one of those treasures is worth at Bookride (a blog about rare and valuable books with entertaining commentary)…

I just love the narrative style of this story, it is the perfect book to read aloud. Many of the beautifully composed sentences are filled with irony, or with a quiet understatedness that seems to be typical of early 20th-century children’s publishing. It’s a style that’s inclusive, drawing the young reader into assumptions or generalisations while using grown-up language: “He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him… [The Rabbit] didn’t know that real rabbits existed; he thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out-of-date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.”

Despite the old-world setting of this book – with its descriptions of the nursery toys, playing in the wood and scarlet fever – it has the ultimate timeless subject matter: a child’s relationship with a favourite toy. How easy it is to identify with the toy rabbit, who is at first ignored, then gradually becomes a much loved companion and before long one without whom the little boy can’t sleep. When I was little, I felt a real connection with the story, and I distinctly remember likening details of it to elements of my own life: the description of the gardener’s bonfire location is inextricably linked to a memory of our own backyard incinerator.

I also had a very special rabbit toy myself, which must have been given to me as a baby. It had a bell inside it, and was much loved, with patches of fur worn off. One day I lost ‘Bummy’, and although he was replaced with an identical newer model, it was never the same, and even today, I feel a lingering sense of loss for this toy… Isn’t it strange how such a toy can imprint on us emotionally?

When Brad and I were choosing readings for our wedding, I knew when I came across a passage from The Velveteen Rabbit that it had to be part of our ceremony. Two of my little sisters did a beautiful rendition of the passage on becoming ‘Real’:

“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.”