The Velveteen Rabbit

Okay, today's story is about one of my favourite animals in the whole world.

I had this animal as a pet when I was younger.

I had posters of it on the walls of my room.

I loved rabbits.

I still love rabbits.

This story is called The Velveteen Rabbit.

by Marjorie Williams and it's a very old story so some of the words might sound a little bit odd but all you really need to know is there is a boy and there is a velveteen rabbit like a toy rabbit and there are a number of other toys including a skin horse which is a toy horse with a leathery skin.

Okay, are you ready? There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid.

He was fat and bunchy as a rabbit should be, his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen.

On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the boy's stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming.

"'There were other things in the stocking, "'nuts and oranges and a toy engine "'and chocolate almonds and a clockwork mouse, "'but the rabbit was quite the best of all.

"'For at least two hours the boy loved him, "'and then aunts and uncles came to dinner "'and there was a great rustling of tissue paper "'and unwrapping of parcels, "'and in the excitement of looking at all the new presents, "'the velveteen rabbit was forgotten.' For a long time he lived in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him.

He was naturally shy, and being only made of velveteen, some of the more expensive toys quite snubbed him.

The mechanical toys were very superior.

and looked down upon everyone else they were full of modern ideas and pretended they were real the model boat who had lived through two seasons and lost most of his paint caught the tone from them and never missed an opportunity of referring to his rigging in technical terms the rabbit could not claim to be a model of anything for he 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He thought they were all stuffed with sawdust like himself, and he understood that sawdust was quite out of date and should never be mentioned in modern circles.

Even Timothy, the jointed wooden lion, put on airs and pretended he was connected with government.

Between them all, the poor little rabbit was made to feel himself very insignificant and commonplace, and the only person who was kind to him at all was the skin horse.

The skin horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others.

He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces.

He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger and by and by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys and would never turn into anything else, for nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced, like the skin horse, understand all about it.

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 the 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.