The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane (review)

There's something about an inanimate rabbit that sets fabulists scurrying to the anxious task of sorting out whom and why we love and whether it's ever enough. Somewhere between The Velveteen Rabbit and The Big Ugly Monster and the Little Stone Rabbit (BCCB 9/04), we find Edward Tulane, a dandified specimen belonging to a girl for whom he has little use, other than as a valet to dress him in his finery. Her grandmother Pellegrina senses this and tells girl and toy a cautionary tale about the wretched fate of a beautiful princess who loved no one. Her words transmute into a curse for the unfortunate rabbit, who, after being lost overboard on a cruise, begins a long journey of misadventures. He is alternately beloved and treated with scorn, but in the course of his ignominious fate, he learns what it means to love. The plot is often contrived and the sentiment inclined toward the maudlin, yet there is more than a touch of Hans Christian Andersen in the sadistic treatment Edward must endure to ultimately learn his lesson; indeed, adults will love this moral, especially those who feel that their petted and pampered offspring are not forthcoming enough with the displays of gratitude and affection that warrant their indulgence. Children, on the other hand, may be swept along by the pathos of Edward's various ordeals, especially the final loss of the boy who steals him off a scarecrow's pole to take to his dying sister, and then, after her lingering death, takes him to the city only to lose him to a toymaker, nobly choosing to give a broken and ratty Edward up so that he might be restored to his former glory. The delicate sepia images that head each chapter and the full-color illustrations augment the emotional tenor of the book; each image manages to evoke a sense of longing that serves to involve the reader in Edward's transformation, thus rendering the newly humbled and loving rabbit's return to his former owner an affecting conclusion.