Secret Lives: Real Toys and Talking Animals

A.A. Milne famously based the characters of his beloved books on his own son, Christopher Robin Milne, and his toys. As an adolescent Christopher came to resent the exploitation of his childhood and the unwelcome attention and teasing he endured at school. He gave away the original toys, which are now on display at the New York Public Library.

Milne’s plea on behalf of a charity that sends underprivileged city children for a two-week holiday in the country modestly makes no mention of his position as a famous author. It is also ironic that he seems so concerned with the welfare of strangers’ children, while his own son was largely raised by a nanny.

If a child’s love can make a toy Real, then what happens when that toy is outgrown or discarded? Williams lets fickle children off the hook with the Nursery Magic Fairy’s promise to make [words missing here?]. A Velveteen Rabbit is rescued from the trash pile and becomes a living, leaping, frolicking rabbit.

A plucky, self-possessed wooden doll is exposed to the best and the worst of human nature, and a century of world history, as she is repeatedly lost, found, and passed between owners.

A boy gets to play god, and receives an intense lesson in responsibility, when he acquires a magic key-and-cupboard combo that brings his Native American figurine to life.

Like the love child of Pinocchio and Hitty, a vain, spoiled toy rabbit is lost at sea and undergoes a series of hardships as he’s passed between owners – turned into a marionette, crucified as a scarecrow, and smashed to pieces – before he learns to love them back. Finally he is reunited with his first owner, now a grown woman with a daughter of her own.

In the most famous of Kipling’s stories, a baby boy is found in the Indian jungle, and raised by the animals that find him. Mowgli learns their languages and ways – and so is called a sorcerer by uncomprehending adults when he tries to return to the society of humans.

Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) spent the first few years of his life as an Anglo-Indian – an English person living in British-controlled India – and returned again as a teenager. The experience of growing up between two cultures had a profound impact on his development, and became a recurring theme in his stories.

Roald Dahl’s dapper hero proves just how fantastic he is by repeatedly outwitting the three human farmers bent on his demise, stealing their food to feed his family and the entire animal neighborhood.