Tag Archives: Beatrix Potter

Peter Rabbit Party!

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Finally! You CAN go into Mr. McGregor’s garden!

Last weekend, community families were invited to spend a day with Peter Rabbit, literature’s most enduring radish-eater. This was our first foray into Saturday programming specifically aimed at children ages 2-6, and oh my goodness was it a rousing success. We were also delighted to be joined by our friends from the West Trenton Garden Club, who you will meet a little later in this post!

While there was plenty to learn about Beatrix Potter at the event, the main attraction was the dress up cottage and planting garden, designed with a charming Potter-esque vibe in mind. Heading over to the cottage, we had an outdoor tea garden…

And just a few steps away is the kitchen! This was a cute wooden set we scored inexpensively online, we removed the peg legs to make it extra stable for young enthusiastic chefs.

Next to the kitchen set were three baskets of dress up clothes. You can see just a few combinations below…we tried to replicate Potter’s aesthetic with aprons, bonnets, vests, straw hats, shawls, and a dashing tam o’ shanter!

Upstairs was a cozy cottage bed (a giant floor pillow covered with a quilt and bolster):

Meanwhile, over in the garden, we had two “plantable” vegetable beds, fabric carrots, garden carts, a well-stocked produce stand, and a trio of bunny bouncers!

The vegetable beds were long cardboard boxes. We bought dozens of toy foam bricks, then laid the bricks on top of short pieces of toilet paper tubes hot glued to the bottom of the box. The tubes elevated the bricks just enough to allow 7.5″ fabric carrots to be “planted” in the holes of the bricks. Below you can see one of the bricks removed to reveal its toilet paper tube support:

And here’s a close up of that adorable produce cart!

For quieter activities, we had a coloring table with sheets from “Paint Like Peter Rabbit,” a free Cotsen Children’s Library publication that features illustrations reproduced from Peter Rabbit’s Painting Book, an item we have in our special collections.

We also had a sweet little reading nook with a number of Beatrix Potter books to enjoy:

Adventurous budding ornithologists could scan the gallery for garden birds of England, eight of which we posted around the event floor:

I mentioned them in the introduction, but now it is my distinct pleasure to present Barbara Lear and Anne Skalka from the West Trenton Garden Club! These two wonderful ladies brought their enthusiasm, expertise, and boundless energy to the event, teaching kids about how plants go from seed to snack, including an display of sprouted avocado trees! They had plenty of dirt and pots on hand so kids could start little gardens of their own. They were an absolutely amazing team, and we appreciate them so much!

The Cotsen Children’s Library has a number of Beatrix Potter treasures in its special collections, and we wanted to use this opportunity to educate young visitors about these fantastic items. We’ll begin with an original stuffed Jemima Puddle-Duck (which I posted about here on the blog).

jemima

From the Cotsen Children’s Library collections, Princeton University Library

In honor of this terrific original textile, two library staff members – Wind Cowles, Associate Dean for Data, Research, and Teaching; and Sarah Reiff Conell, Research Data Management Specialist – crafted a needle felt rabbit family for visitors to enjoy!

In addition to the Jemima stuffed animal, Cotsen has a number of Beatrix Potter’s family photographs (you can browse them here). Several photos include Beatrix with her beloved pets, so we put together an exhibit wall of eight photos, including this one of Beatrix and Benjamin Bouncer:

From the Cotsen Children’s Library collections, Princeton University Library

We also have some of Beatrix Potter’s natural history drawings and picture letters she sent to children. Many of those letters became the famous books we know today, including the Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, which you can view in our special collections here. We put together an event table with a display of her drawings and picture letters, with plenty of paper and pens on hand for children to try drawing and writing their own.

If you’d like a closer look at the handsome jumping spider illustration that’s prominently displayed in the center of the tables, you’ll find it this post.

Almost all the photos you’ve seen were taken before the event, when everything was nice and tidy. But then the doors opened and it was a massive flood of happy gardeners for four hours straight. We had a HUGE turnout. Honestly, we were so hopping we barely managed to snap photos!

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I would say that our inaugural event for younger children was an unqualified success, and it was such a delight to see everyone turn out for such a classic children’s character. In their best rabbit duds no less!

Many thanks to Barbara Lear and Anne Skalka from the West Trenton Garden Club for volunteering their time and expertise! Thank you as well to Wind Cowles and Sarah Reiff Conell for your beautiful artistic needle felt creations. And finally, thank you to graduate student volunteer Shruti Sharma for helping out on such a big day!

Discovering Beatrix

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What could be better then re-discovering a beloved author? Realizing she’s even more amazing then you thought! Author Linda Elovitz Marshall enjoys creating spunky characters. But on a literary ramble in the UK, she discovered that Beatrix Potter was a real life tour de force when it came to writing, publishing, and land conservation! Her most recent non-fiction picture book, Saving the Countryside: The Story of Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit (Little Bee Books, 2020) shares the wonderful facts behind this literary icon.

Did you have a favorite Beatrix Potter book when you were growing up?

My favorite Beatrix Potter book was, of course, Peter Rabbit. Who could resist that curious, mischievous bunny? I don’t quite remember reading Beatrix Potter’s other books when I was growing up. However, I do remember holding them…and loving that the books were just the right size for my hands!

Can you tell us a little about the literary ramble you took in 2018?

I’m a member of Kindling Words, a non-profit organization of children’s book authors, illustrators, and editors. Every year the organization holds a weekend-long conference on the east coast and a week-long writing retreat on the west and, every once-in-a-while, the group organizes a trip.

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Pipe organ in the Story Museum, Oxford, England.

The “Literary Ramble” to England was such a trip. Along with twelve other children’s authors and illustrators, I visited the homes, workspaces, and communities where Lewis Carroll, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Graham, J.K. Rowling, Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, and Philip Pullman lived and wrote. It was an amazing and wonderfully inspiring trip!

How did you research this book?

My research began while visiting Beatrix Potter’s home (Castle Cottage) in England, I listened intently as Mandy Marshall (no relation to me), the curator/hostess described Beatrix’s background and upbringing.

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Near Sawrey, England, where Beatrix Potter’s estate is located.

Prior to that trip, I’d imagined Beatrix as a sweet writer of charming bunny stories who was, in my imagination, kind of a goody-goody. Instead, I learned that she was a feisty girl who – more than anything – wanted to be outside (or inside) exploring and discovering and researching. She grew up to be a feisty adult, too, who wasn’t about to let anyone hold her down. When I heard all this, I knew I had to learn more about her.

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Enjoying tea and scones inside Castle Cottage, Beatrix Potter’s home.

I dove into research, visiting museums near where Beatrix lived, purchasing books to use for continuing my research at home. I also contacted Linda Lear, a brilliant researcher and author whose book, Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature helped immensely. Linda Lear also fact-checked my manuscript. She – and everyone I contacted – was wonderfully helpful.
I was trained as an anthropologist and am naturally curious. I researched…and researched…and researched. I absolutely adore doing research!

You also write fiction…how is the writing process different? Or is it the same?

Candace Fleming, who is an amazing writer and an absolutely superlative teacher, made a statement that I’d like to paraphrase. In both fiction and non-fiction, you’re baking a cake. In fiction, you throw in whatever ingredients you want. In non-fiction, you can use only the ingredients you’re given. But in both cases, you want it to taste good – so good that people want to devour the whole thing. And, in both cases, it needs a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I love writing fiction as well as non-fiction. I’ve tried turning non-fiction stories into fiction stories. I did that with Grandma Rose’s Magic, which was inspired by my grandmother’s sewing business.

View from the author’s summer studio in the Adirondacks.

In both cases, a story needs “heart.” To write about Beatrix with “heart,” I needed to read about her, feel her feelings, and know her as much as possible. Only that way, could give my readers a sense of who she was and what was important to her. In my book, The Polio Pioneer: Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio Vaccine, I needed to understand – and feel – what was important to Dr. Salk so I could convey that to my readers. Whether writing fiction or non-fiction, I want to make my readers feel.

If you could ask Beatrix Potter herself a question, what would it be?

Dear Beatrix,

Did I tell your story well? Are you happy with it? And, Beatrix, what do you think of the way that women are being treated these days? What would YOU do if you lived now?

Sorry, that’s four questions. I hope that’s okay. Did I mention that I’m incredibly curious about … almost everything?!

Images courtesy of Linda Marshall. Book cover illustrated by Ilaria Urbinati, courtesy of Little Bee Books.

Just Ducky

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jemimaNext to Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck is one of Beatrix Potter’s most endearing and memorable characters. This charming stuffed animal version was created for Potter in 1910 by two of her neighbors, Miss Hammond and Miss Mills. The cloth for the shawl even came from the calico factory owned by Potter’s mother’s family. This toy was the prototype used to secure a patent for a mass-produced stuffed animal. In fact, you can still buy a version of the stuffed toy today.

patent papersJemima had a place of honor on top of Beatrix’s book case until she was given to Freda Jackson (nee Storey), the daughter of Beatrix’s farm manager in the late 1950s. Imagine what a wonderful present that would be!

Jemima Puddle-Duck soft toy prototype produced to secure the patent
England, 1910
Created by Miss Hammond and Miss Mills
Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library

Certificate of Registration of Design [Jemima Puddle-Duck doll]
England, June 17, 1910
Cotsen Children’s Library, Princeton University Library