One day, the boy goes out to play in the wood behind his house and while he is there he sees a couple of rabbits playing near him. But when he eventually does move he realizes that the fairy has transformed him into a real living rabbit. At first, Rabbit doesn’t want to move because he is scared that the other rabbits will realize he is just a toy. The fairy takes Rabbit out to the forest and leaves him with the group of wild rabbits and asks them to take care of him.
A fairy appears out of the flower and makes Rabbit real! A tear falls from his eyes, a real tear! And where it falls a strange flower grows. He is very sad and remembers all the happiness he has shared with the boy. The rabbit is taken outside to a shed in the garden in a sack. The doctor however orders the boy’s nanny to burn all his old toys so that the scarlet fever germs can’t be spread. Rabbit stays by the boy’s side until he is completely better. One day the little boy gets very sick and it is discovered that he has scarlet fever.
When the boy comes to fetch Rabbit he frightens the wild rabbits away.Īs time goes by Rabbit becomes more and more old and worn from being played with. They come to him wanting to play but he can’t move because he is still just a toy. There Rabbit meets a few wild forest rabbits. One sunny day, the boy takes Rabbit outside to play. Rabbit is completely overjoyed to hear that the boy thinks he is real. The boy begs his nanny to fetch Rabbit from the garden and insists that Rabbit is real and not a toy. One night, Rabbit is left outside by mistake. They play together, cuddle together and sleep together and Rabbit slowly begins to lose his fur and come apart in places. After this, the boy and Rabbit become best friends. One night, the boy’s nanny gives him Rabbit to sleep with when he can’t find one of his other toys.
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.” Skin Horse | The Velveteen RabbitĪfter speaking with Skin Horse, the Velveteen Rabbit wanted nothing more than to be real. 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 happen often 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. 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. One day the Rabbit asks Skin Horse what it means to be real. Skin Horse has lived in the nursery a lot longer than any of the other toys and he takes the Rabbit under his wing. None of the other toys are kind to him except for Skin Horse. Rabbit is sad especially when he sees that the other toys are mechanical with moving parts and he is just a plain old stuffed toy with nothing special about him. At first, he doesn’t take too much notice of the rabbit because the other toys he has received are much more exciting. One Christmas, a little boy gets a beautiful rabbit made out of velveteen for Christmas. The Velveteen Rabbit Q&A The Velveteen Rabbit Summary