Part 1 - Christmas Morning & the Skin Horse
There was once a velveteen rabbit, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was fat and bunchy, as a rabbit should be; his coat was spotted brown and white, he had real thread whiskers, and his ears were lined with pink sateen. On Christmas morning, when he sat wedged in the top of the Boy’s stocking, with a sprig of holly between his paws, the effect was charming. There were other things in the stocking - nuts and oranges and a toy engine - but the Rabbit was quite the best of all. For at least two hours the Boy loved him, and then Aunts and Uncles came to dinner, and in the excitement of looking at the new presents the Velveteen Rabbit was forgotten. He lived for a long time in the toy cupboard or on the nursery floor, and no one thought very much about him. The only one who was kind to him was the Skin Horse, who had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others and was wise about nursery magic. ‘What is REAL?’ asked the Rabbit one day. ‘Real isn’t how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘When a child loves you for a long, long time - not just to play with, but REALLY loves you - then you become Real.’
Part 2 - Spring Days, a Secret, and Illness
Spring came, and wherever the Boy went the Rabbit went too. He had rides in the wheelbarrow, picnics on the grass, and fairy huts under the raspberry canes. One evening the Rabbit met two real rabbits and felt a strange tickly longing to hop and dance like they did. Weeks passed and the little Rabbit grew old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. Then the Boy fell ill. Strange people came and went, and a light burned all night, while the little Rabbit lay hidden under the bedclothes, afraid someone might take him away.
Part 3 - The Fairy Flower and Becoming Real
When the Boy recovered, orders came to burn the Rabbit with the rest of the things from the sickroom. The little Rabbit was placed in a sack and carried to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house. Lonely, he thought of the Skin Horse and of the long sunlit hours in the garden. A tear fell - and where it fell a flower grew, and from it a fairy stepped out. ‘Little Rabbit,’ she said, ‘I am the Nursery Magic Fairy. I take care of all the playthings that children have loved and turn them into Real.’ She kissed his little velveteen nose, and when he hopped into the wood he found he had hind legs at last. In the spring the Boy saw a brown rabbit with familiar markings and thought, ‘Why, he looks just like my old Bunny!’ - though he never knew it was truly his own Bunny, come back to look at the child who had first helped him to be Real.