Alison Uttley wrote Little Grey Rabbit’s Washing Day during WWII, her son who was inspired by their laundry drying on the line suggested the plot. According to Country Child, Uttley preferred it to Water Rat’s Picnic and chuckled as she wrote it.
Month: June 2019
Little Grey Rabbit’s Birthday
Little Grey Rabbit’s Birthday
Illustrations by Margaret Tempest.
Alison Uttley wrote Little Grey Rabbit’s Birthday around the end of 1941, along with Hare Joins the Home Guard but it was not available to the public until December 1944. I like to imagine she received letters from children wanting to know Rabbit’s birthday, or because her characters were “real” that they naturally would have a detail like a birthday.
Character Spotlight: Rat
Why you dirty rat…
Rats are seldom heroes in Children’s literature—with the exception of Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Rats are usually portrayed as thieving pests. Take in case The Tale of Samuel Whiskers, Samuel and his wife Anna Maria are squatters and thieves. In the Fantastic Mr. Fox, Rat is a greedy drunkard, and in the Pied Piper of Hamlin rats are so numerous that they are a plague. Other writers have gone different routes. E.B. White’s Templeton (Charlotte’s Web) is greedy and self-interested, but eventually comes around to being useful contributor, even if only for self-preservation. In A Little Princess, Frances Hodgson Burnett added a dash of romance to Sara Crewe’s impoverished circumstances by giving her a tame “bastille rat” for a pet. Alison Uttley made her rat a bit of everything and seems to have had with introducing him little by little in her books. He starts off as a burglar, and ends up a tamed “…respectable working animal…” Continue reading “Character Spotlight: Rat”
Hare Joins the Home Guard
June 6, 2019 was the 75thanniversary of D-Day and so I chose to spotlight Hare Joins the Home Guard. It was published in 1941, and the copy I am using is an abridged Diamond Book reprint from 1994.
War comes to Little Grey Rabbit’s peaceful land, and everyone must do his or her part to support the war effort. Grey Rabbit is a one woman Red Cross unit, Squirrel knits socks and mittens for the troops and Hare joins the Home Guard.
The enemy invader is an army of Weasels from an unspecified “wild land”. The working title was Grey Rabbit’s War, and was written during World War II, and brings contemporary troubles into the world of LGR. In Alison Uttley: Life of a Country Child, Dennis Judd posits, “…the book must have reassured thousands of young readers aware that Britain faced imminent invasion and defeat.” This really placed the book in context for me. In school, I remember constantly being told how fortunate the United States was not to have major battles take place stateside during WWII. Judd supports his statement by citing a letter Alison Uttley received from a young boy who believed “…Goebbels won’t let the Nazis come now because Hare will stop them.” It’s rather reassuring of the power of books as tools of comfort and distraction, but also ironic seeing as Hare is hardly the hero this kid writing to Alison Uttley thought he was, as we shall see. Continue reading “Hare Joins the Home Guard”
The Little Grey Rabbit Library
A review of the Little Grey Rabbit library editions.
The Little Grey Rabbit Library
Wow, it’s been ninety years since the first publication of The Hare, the Squirrel, and the Little Grey Rabbit. Back in the 80’s and 90’s Collins celebrated the over fifty milestone by launching the Little Grey Rabbit Library. On the back of the book they described it as a “…smart new look. Fresh, pretty covers and a picture on every opening make them more attractive than ever before. Start collecting your Little Grey Rabbit Library now.”
Quietly, inside the book on the copyright page they confess, “Alison Uttley’s original story has been abridged for this book.” Take heart, at least the foreword is included. Continue reading “The Little Grey Rabbit Library”
Little Grey Rabbit Scholar 