The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes

The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes
Du Bose Heyward ~ Majorie Flack
Houghton and Mifflin, 1939

Though this is a fairly obvious pre-Easter pick, it is THE best Easter book of all time, so I HAD to mention it. Unfortunately, my mom still won't release my childhood copy, but she did get my son a vintage edition for his first Easter. If you don't know this book, then you've been living under a rock in a world where the sun doesn't shine, birds have never uttered a peep, rainbows are fiction and all smiles turn upside down. If you do know this book, well then, your folks did good by you.

This was my ALL TIME favorite story as a child. The Country Bunny is the kind of book that dreams are made of. The kind of book that helps shape the way you look at holidays (and the world) forever. The kind of book that inspires girls to become presidents and children's book bloggers. The kind of book that is more like a member of the family than an inanimate object that sits on a cluttered bookshelf. I could literally wax poetic for a lifetime about why this book is so incredibly special (particularly if you are a GIRL!) But alas... I'll let the words and the pictures speak for themselves.

One day a little country girl bunny with a brown skin
and a little cotton-ball of a tail said, "Some day I shall
grow up to be the Easter Bunny: you wait and see!"
Then all of the big white bunnies who lived in fine houses,
and the Jack Rabbits with long legs who can run fast,
laughed at the little Cottontail and told her to go
back to the country and eat a carrot.
But she said, "Wait and see!"

Every single word and frame of this book is so deeply ingrained in my heart, I couldn't possibly cherish it more. You can't choose the books your kids are gonna fall in love with, but it would be pretty hard to not fall for this one head over heals. Simply the best of the best.

Epilogue:
I never knew much about this book except that its author was from the South Carolina lowcountry like me until I started researching it this morning. Ends up that the story was one he used to tell to his daughter (thus the "AS TOLD TO JENIFER" on the cover), and it was his only children's book... within a year of its publication, he was dead of a heart attack. Check out this very sentimental write-up of the history here.

Also by:
The Story About Ping
Tim Tadpole and the Great Bullfrog
Angus and the Cat

—————

Read along on Facebook, tumblr, Twitter and Etsy