Margery Williams Bianco

Don Daily

Margery Williams

By the time the Velveteen Rabbit is dirty, worn out, and about to be burned, he has almost given up hope of ever finding the magic called Real.

Or, How Toys Become Real

The Velveteen Rabbit

brie

this was simply delightful. i wish i had had the opportunity to read this when i was a kid. i can’t believe it made me cry lmao.

Qonita

A new addition to my treasured shelf. For personal reasons, I cried so much over and over while reading the 13 pages of this book. It's about love and being Real, and probably other things too that I'm not quite ready to pinpoint but just attacked me like a wrecking ball. It's chock full of symbolism that it's almost poetry, and it digs emotional interaction and existence so sublimely I gotta put it in my philosophical bookshelf. Might come back later for scrutiny with hopefully more composure, I'm too much of a watery pool on the floor now to write a proper review.

Meagan Fischer 

Atli 💗🧚🏽‍♀️

“when you are real you don't mind being hurt,” has got to be one of the most heartbreaking things i've ever heard. this is such a beautiful little story.

Beatriz Aguiar

Tilde C

I didn't grow up with this one, as far as I'm able to tell there was never an official translation into Norwegian. I think I recall watching an animated short film based on it when I was very, very young, but that's all.

I'm in my thirties and I started weeping like a baby at, like, page three, and I didn't stop until I'd finished. Right away the story feels so universal, right away it speaks about how love changes you. I like to imagine if someone HAD read me this as a child, I would feel that same warm flush of awe, and perhaps suspect that the story was about more than just childhood toys being alive.

Amina Madadi (ⴰⵎⵉⵏⴰ)

“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.

A very simple tale that touches your heart in so many ways, it's about a stuffed rabbit, who lived in a nursery with other sophisticated toys who were thinking high of themselves, until the nursery magic happened to him, just like the wise skin horse said, because he was loved so much by the boy who took him with him everywhere until he had scarlett fever and the doctor ordered to burn all the old toys, he was so sad that a real tear fell to the ground and what happens next, you read the story ;)

The Velveteen Rabbit Or, How Toys Become Real

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