This is the story of the velveteen rabbit, a kind of mediocre toy, who with luck one day is selected to get to hang out with the boy in the house. He had been riding the pine with the other bad toys, or broken toys, but when the A+ toy, the china dog, can’t be found, he gets selected. This is pretty great, but then the boy gets pneumonia or something, and all the bed clothes and sheets and the rabbit are sent out to be burnt. So good luck got him a taste of the good life, and bad luck will make him pay for it. It’s clearly a kind of metaphor about class. You can want to be part of the upper classes, and you might through luck end up there, but they won’t accept you, and they will demand your love and loyalty, and when they’re through with it or need to sacrifice you, they will.
This is kind of fundamentally a fucked up book. I reread it because it was available on Overdrive, and I haven’t thought about it for years, but I was in a play version of this as a kid, but the messaging of this book, like the messaging in a lot of older kids’ books basically says, you owe your life to service, and it will kill you. There’s a kind of sense that the toy here owes a debt of life, gratitude, love, and sacrifice to the boy, who to his credit doesn’t do any of the bad stuff, but also doesn’t extend those same values or let those values define or inform his own actions in the world.
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+velveteen+rabbit&crid=2RTAXBT8V55B4&sprefix=the+velvet%2Caps%2C214&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_10)
