2015 read #20: Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson.*

Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson*
128 pages
Published 1944; expurgated edition published 1972
Read April 22
Rating: ★★ out of 5

* Denotes a reread.

Practically as soon as I finished Sweetwater, I've been trying to track down this book. Like Sweetwater, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and The Black Pearl, Rabbit Hill is one of the few actual children's books I remember from my childhood; unlike those three, I actually read Rabbit Hill in full, included for some unknown reason in a volume of Reader's Digest condensed books, rather than encountering only a sample chapter in my older brother's English textbooks. But in a further distinction from Sweetwater, NIMH, and Pearl, I couldn't recall the name of Rabbit Hill all these years later. I had known the book I sought had something to do with rabbits; I'd been convinced it was either The Wind in the Willows or Watership Down until I took the time to read the pair of them. I also remembered something about the rabbit family pulling out a last remaining bottle of dandelion wine, which isn't a helpful detail (the wine turned out to be elderberry, anyway). I was out of leads and had given up ever finding the book again, until the header image for a random io9 link caught my eye and I immediately recognized it: That's it! That's the one!

Rereading it now, I can see why I liked it so well -- Lawson makes efficient use of archetypes (the fretful mother prone to fainting away, the stern but gentlemanly father, the bedraggled and crusty old bachelor, the springy and cheerful lad everyone loves) to make his hillside world feel bigger and more lived-in than the number of pages would suggest, an impression amplified by his excellent illustrations, which Jonathan Lethem calls "entrancing" in that BoingBoing interview linked to by io9. Really, it's those line drawings that make Rabbit Hill a classic, however marginal a classic it may be. The plot is as thin as the animals' larders after the hard winter, skipping from one episode to the next, never shy with a moralizing nudge. The Wiki article adds a dimension I never would have picked up on my own: "The book was written at the end of WWII when racial integration and providing aid to the war torn countries of Europe were on everyone's minds. When reading the story with those in mind, the moral intent becomes clear."

The Wiki article also informed me that "Printings of the book beginning in the 1970s and continuing today have edited the character Sulphronia, the new occupants' cook. This was done because she was originally depicted as an African American stereotype." Even with that expurgation, Rabbit Hill is suffused with casual sexism and dated social relationships, which helped mitigate its modest charms. I don't think this is a book I would pass down to my own child.