Utterly endearing and touching to no end, with an unforgettable lesson on love, and life. Highly enjoyable as a child for its simplicity, and as an adult for its meaning. This children’s book is regarded in many lists as one of the best ever written, and very rightfully so. This is what perfection tastes like, a kind of book I so rarely find. HEART! I’m dying to go to a store, get a stuffed rabbit and huge it and love it until it becomes real. But Rabbit knows he is not Real, he's wearing out, and one fateful day little Boy becomes ill. Rabbit snuggles with him at night, and plays with him during the day.
At first he isn’t noticed, but with time Rabbit finds a place in little Boy’s heart. He didn’t mind how he looked to other people, because the nursery magic had made him Real, and when you are Real shabbiness doesn’t matter.One Christmas morning, little Boy receives many presents, and among them a Velveteen Rabbit. To him he was always beautiful, and that was all that the little Rabbit cared about.
He even began to lose his shape, and he scarcely looked like a rabbit any more, except to the Boy. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off, and the pink lining to his ears turned grey, and his brown spots faded. Weeks passed, and the little Rabbit grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. 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." 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. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. "It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?" "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt." "Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real." "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?" "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. I happened to come across it on the internet and was thinking how much of a deeper meaning it has now. When we were married, almost 44 years ago, the priest added this reading to our wedding ceremony from a children’s book, “The Velveteen Rabbit” by Margery Williams.
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