(courtesy IMP Awards)
I have read so many books in my life that remembering ones that particularly struck me, even as a child, isn’t easy.
But one of the twenty or so books that has stuck to my head and my heart like storytelling super glue is the moving 1922 publication The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Willams, with illustrations by William Nicholson, to which I was introduced by a friend of the family name Kirsty somewhere in my early teens.
As someone who has always felt thing keenly and very deeply, the book’s tale of a young boy and his toy rabbit whom he loves with a fierce passion and their coming together and cruelly sad separation tears at your heartstrings like almost nothing else I’ve ever read.
And yet in the midst of all that sadness and that loss is a towering and heartwarming reminder of the muscular power of real love to totally and utterly change and to remake our lives into something quite remarkably beautiful.
In both the book, and the recent adaptation on AppleTV+ which is sparingly lovely and yet sumptuously gorgeous all at once, the toy rabbit is in the nursery talking the oldest and most thoughtful toy in the nursery, the Skin Horse who remarks on how transformational pure and unconditional love can be.
“Real isn’t how you are made… 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”.
As an exercise in nature vs. nurture, this trumps everything else and reminds us that who we are when we are born – think here of William, the boy at the heart of the tale (played in the adaptation by Phoenix Laroche) who grows from knowing and loving his toy rabbit with which he goes on bold adventures – or in the case of the toy rabbit, made, is not the end of our story.
Love, real beautiful unconditional love can write so much more into the story which is on wholly affecting display in the streaming version when shy nervous William, traumatised by a move away from the school he loves and the friends he knows, finally says hello to the kids next door and takes a step into a world not defined by his aloneness but by his community with others.
It’s a beautiful moment, and while it’s preceded by William’s tearfully touching farewell to the toy rabbit, who has now taken a very real form indeed – while it’s a fair bet many know the story and its magical twist, not all do so spoilers shall be kept to a minimum here – you get the sense that both William and the rabbit knows its time to say goodbye and go their separate ways.
Capturing the heart and soul of The Velveteen Rabbit to a quietly but deeply affecting degree, this adaptation is a visual and narrative joy, using its 45-minute runtime so effectively with adroit world-building and beautifully judged narrative touchpoints, that you reach the end feeling much the same as you do with the luminously wonderful book – deeply, utterly sad that William and Rabbit have been separated after so much love passes between them but so grateful that that same love has changed everything and that both of them will never be the same again in so many good and transformational ways.
The Velveteen Rabbit is streaming on AppleTV+