sage | library outing + a favorite story

my parents never read me the velveteen rabbit growing up, but i must say, it is one of my favorite children's books. the message in it is profound. 

so to my delight, sage picked it up and brought it over to me to read to her while roaming the children's section at the public library. i didn't get through the entire story before she started wandering off to bring me other books, playing with the magnetic alphabet, and asking me to perform a puppet show, but i kept reading...perhaps for my own sake.


anyway, before all that i managed to grab this picture of her and the book - one of my favorites from this weekend's visit to san diego. 

An excerpt:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."