animals, books, Family, Fantasy, Kids, Nature, space, Uncategorized

Rabbit Whimsy

51 Comments

Last month Bill (I think it was Bill) mentioned Voyage to the Bunny Planet by Rosemary Wells.  It had been in print a few years before I was first read it to Child, but I remember that we had it from the library at some point.  The Hennepin Library doesn’t own a copy any longer but I was able to get it through InterLibrary Loan and I’m liking it so much that I’ve ordered myself a copy.  (I have a very modest children’s book collection – based solely on what I like).

There are three stories, each featuring a young bunny who has had an exceedingly bad day —  never-ending math class, horrible cousins, medicine that tastes like gasoline.  At the end of these bad days, the young bunnies wish for a visit to the Bunny Planet.  There they are greeted by the kind Queen Janet who invites them in with a “Here’s the day that should have been.”  Each bunny falls off to sleep with the visions of a perfect day dancing in their heads.

At the beginning of each story, there is a rabbit quote like this:

It is the first duty of a flagging spirit to seek renewal
in the latitudes of whimsy.  I, for one, dream on
beyond the give planets to a world without wickedness;
verdant, mild, and populated by amiable lapins.
Benjamin Franklin

The other quotes are from Rudyard Kipling (“The captain fell at daybreak, and ‘e’s ravin’ in ‘is bed, With a regiment of rabbits on the planets round ‘is ‘ead.”) and Galileo (“I designated this heavenly body “Coniglio,” but alas, never saw it again.”)

It’s gratifying to see rabbits making the grade in heavenly literature but I think it’s fascinating that Benjamin Franklin dreamed of whimsy and thought a perfect world would be a bunny haven.

I say whimsy all around!

Tell me about your “day that should have been” and how your perfect world would look?

51 thoughts on “Rabbit Whimsy”

  1. Morning-
    I have always liked tims’ suggestion of 10 perfect days… we have had a few this spring, then it snows again. Today is shaping up nicely. I might say it’s too hot by this afternoon.
    Just saw a rabbit out by the shed yesterday; dogs sure were interested in it, but it had a good head start.

    My perfect world. Wow, that’s a big question… I had a discussion recently about Utopia’s. They never seem to work out as well as hoped.

    Hey look! We have 11,111 followers! Nice number alliteration! (Would that be the right word for that??)

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

    1. If I were to make a generalization about utopian experiments and why they failed, it would be because they were based on a naive and flawed expectation of human nature.

      We had four rabbits chasing each other around our back yard two evenings ago.

      Liked by 4 people

      Reply

      1. I think I like the notion of grouping Thomas More’s Utopia, Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and Rosemary Wells’ Bunny Planet.

        Liked by 3 people

        Reply

  2. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    In my whimsical, perfect world, rabbits are not part of it. I am Farmer McGregor, after all, chasing after the evil rabbits with a hoe so my garden veggies can survive the growing season. No mamas giving birth in my row of beets or my cold frame. No genius bunnies scaling my garden fence and eating my seedlings. To further the fantasy, no mice in my kitchen.

    Bah, Humbug.

    A “perfect day” features nothing scheduled, no demands, 70 sunny degrees, and a cupola strong, bitter coffee with cream.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

      2. Actually now that I think about it I think we should give auto correct more credit for whimsy. I often think, when I see an auto correct that I should write it down and make a list of them because some of them are hysterical.

        Liked by 4 people

        Reply

    2. I, too, am Farmer McGregor. We are fencing in our garden with poultry netting this year to keep the bunnies out. It is a lot more work, but saves on aggravation later in the summer.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  3. A lot of the day would be outside, some of it in the garden, some of it away from home in a place where I can listen to birdsong for hours. This happened the other day when we helped do outdoor chores at Kinstone, which deserves its own blog post (soon), so I’ll clarify later.

    The day would also include getting marvelous take-out food to eat outside somewhere, perhaps with other friends. In my perfect world we all leave our cell phones at home.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  5. Well, today was a pretty perfect day. Phone call from Daughter as we finalized a trip to Tacoma in early July. She made all the arrangements for lodging in Tacoma and on the Olympic Peninsula. The minestrone smells wonderful. We finalized garden plans at home and at church.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

  6. I found an old favorite kids book from the “I Can Read” series in a Little Free Lib. the other day – Grasshopper On the Road by Arnold Lobel. Had completely forgotten, but re-reading – it’s like the Tao Te Ching for kids!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

    1. I loved the I can Read series; had a lot of those. Don’t know the one you mentioned. And I did a paper on the Tao Te Ching for a religion class last fall. But sure wouldn’t have thought to put those two things together!

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

  7. Speaking of kids’ books, where would children’s literature be without rabbits? Is any other creature so extensively represented?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  10. OT update on the minestrone: the borlotti or cranberry beans that soaked overnight won’t soften as I want, so I have been cooking and cooking and adding brodo, and now I have about 2 gallons of quite wonderful minestrone with some chewy beans. It is a really thick soup despite all the extra broth I used.

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  11. The most relevant book I use in therapy these days is Porcupette Finds a Family by Vanita Oelschlager. I have a hard time not choking up when I read it to my small clients.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  13. Well, today is a pretty perfect day. We had no things to perform at church, so we stayed home. We Skyped with grandson for his third birthday. We finalized garden plans for church and home. We bought 8 bags of compost/ manure for the church garden. We started the Minnesota Mini’s cantelope seeds and transplanted the cabbage seedlings. I made curried North Indian vegetables and finished the minestrone. Now, Husband is napping and I am putting my feet up. We also had .04 rain, which isn’t much in Minnesota standards, but means everything here.

    Liked by 4 people

    Reply

  14. One red Storm cell came through here… south of us, got 15 drops of rain and the power is out. There was some good lightning; hit something. The fuse on our pole is out.
    But I did finish fieldwork!

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply

  17. yesterday. was a wonderful day
    ari turned 3 on thursday so i took him chocolate cake for breakfast and to the playground then we had a nice small day of the birthday dinner and yesterday we had the friends of aris family over to the backyard with a blow up jumpy house plugged in and the beanbag toss game and a b b que on a perfect sunny but not too sunny day warm but not too warm no bugs until dusk
    a perfect day for sure
    first day i took off work other than to drive to chicago in some time
    welcome decompression

    Liked by 3 people

    Reply
  18. Pingback: Rabbit Whimsy – MobsterTiger

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.