Velveteen Rabbit

Posted on April 14, 2003 in Culture

A few books from childhood do more than remain with us: they stab us whenever we think about them. The Velveteen Rabbit does this for me. Sometimes when I think of it, I remember the stuffed toy yearning to be real like the boy who loves it so, and I start to choke up. Think of the ending where the rabbit has become real and can only look at the boy from a distance, dimly remembering him. And the boy thinking “that looks like my old rabbit”, but never knowing that this is his rabbit, gone to an earthly paradise.

Sometimes, when the emptiness stings especially hard, I wonder: Whatever happened to the skin horse? Is it prancing in a field somewhere, throwing its mane and galloping across the prairie with the wild mustangs? Or did it just enter oblivion? Someone tell me: what happened to the skin horse? I fear the worst.