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.
Tag: children’s literature
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”
Review: Little Grey Rabbit’s Story Treasury
Little Grey Rabbit is the heroine of a collection of Animal genre-fantasy stories by Alison Uttley. The first book, The Hare, the Squirrel, and the Little Grey Rabbit was published in Great Britain in 1929 and first illustrated by Margaret Tempest. The books are slice of life type stories that usually deal with Grey Rabbit and her friends outwitting an enemy, celebrating a holiday, or enjoying an activity.
Continue reading “Review: Little Grey Rabbit’s Story Treasury”
Little Grey Rabbit Scholar 