Every Easter this is the book I've read. First it was read to me, later I read it, later still I read it to my children and now they read it when I remember to pull off the shelf. This weekend they are not at home. They are with their father, so I'm reading it to myself, again, like I'm a girl on Easter Eve.
This book was published when my mother was two years old. As it says on the back cover flap; "It is difficult to believe that this very modern feminist tale was originally written in 1939. A gem of a fantasy in which kindness and cleverness win out over size and brawn."--Learning Magazine. As I grew up to become a mother myself, I looked to the Country Bunny as a role model of perseverance, patient parenting, teaching responsibility and assigning common chores to each of her 21 babies. She is also a single mother. No mention of father bunny or any grandparent bunnies to help her.
However, the book starts when she is a young brown bunny. She grows up with the local folklore, that if you grow up to be wise, kind and swift that someday you may be one of the five Easter Bunnies. Yes, according to this tale, there are five Easter bunnies that do more work in one night than most people do in a year. A singular white "Grandfather" bunny holds a competition whenever one of the bunnies has to retire. As a girl, the country bunny was discouraged to entertain the notion of auditioning (the elder & rich white rabbits and the male jackrabbits tell her to go back to the country and eat a carrot).
She does go back to the countryside, grow up, grow wise, and have 21 children. She gives each of them jobs to do each day, mostly in pairs; painting, planting, washing, cleaning, sewing and so one. The runty boy is the only one who pulls out her chair for her at night. The illustrations are lush, sensitive and very inviting. Then one day there is news in the woods that a competition will begin for the next 5th bunny.
The Country Bunny is so excited, she takes all her children to see the event (the cover illustration is how they arrive in town to watch). Grandfather bunny watches all the jackrabbits compete. But he's also studying the Country Bunny and her kids, while they are watching the games. He approaches her and says that she must be kind and wise to have such well behave children and have them hold their ears so prettily. He adds a throw-away line to the affect of too bad she must not have time to train to be swift, too. She whispers something to her kids and they scatter to the wind. Before he can understand what she's done, she's collected and returned them all, in single file before him.
She is selected, not only as the 5th bunny, but also for a special mission to send a special diorama sugar egg to a child who has been sick for a long time. This involves a heroes journey that is not usually set for young women, especially in the 1930's! Only once, when the Country bunny become's injured, so close to completing her mission, does the Grandfather bunny appear to her, like Athena does to Odysseus several times during the Iliad, to to help with finishing the task.
Numerous times I've channelled my Inner Country Bunny when I've been injured, told I can't do something, or tried to model a way of being for my children to follow.
When I was a girl the Easter Bunny used to bring me and my sister sugar diorama eggs like the special one delivered to the sick boy. It was magical to wake up to it resting on top of a basket full of grass, candies and perhaps a small toy. The egg would have a little plastic viewing window or be wrapped in cellophane so that one could peer into the spring scene and not disrupt the interior. The outside was frosted with flowers and the sugar often glistened like a stack of powdery snowflakes.
Several times the Easter Bunny has found and delivered the same such eggs to my children. I believe they ate them, something my sister and I never did. I can remember having the egg on my bookshelf well into summer and it seemed to disappear sometime before Halloween.
So tonight, I'm reading The Country Bunny to myself, then I'll continue reading Haruki Murakami's memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Tomorrow, I'll take the dogs for a brisk hike on a trail that winds near a lake, past a horse barn, through some woods and around a large egg shaped rock....
Good Night, Single Mother Bunnies, G'night!
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