The Velveteen Rabbit: Penguin Young Readers

Margery Williams was born in July of 1882. She was an English-American author of numerous novels and children’s books, most notably The Velveteen Rabbit. She is also the author of The Little Wooden Doll, The Skin Horse, as well as many other highly regarded children’s works. She passed away in 1944, just before the end of World War II.

Sir William Nicholson was a renowned English illustrator and artist, who both supplied illustrations for children’s literature as well as wrote it himself. In addition to providing the illustrations for The Velveteen Rabbit, he authored two children’s books entitled Clever Bill and The Pirate Twins. Nicholson also worked in other areas of design, including theater set design; he designed the original set for Peter Pan in 1904. In the 1928 Summer Olympics, Nicholson was awarded a gold medal for his graphic work in the Arts competitions. He passed away in May of 1949.

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. "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. It doesn't happen all at once. You become. It takes a long time. 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."