Editor's Note:

Beatrix Potter was born to a wealthy family in London, England in 1866. Supposedly tutored (but largely ignored) by her governess, she had many long hours to spend alone with a growing menagerie of pets, which she taught herself to draw in startlingly accurate detail and proportion. Her innate intelligence and ability to observe and document minute details of nature should have given her a scientific career. But Victorian England didn't even think women should have "their own" money or property, much less a career in a "man's world."

In 1890, she began illustrating greeting cards, using her pet rabbits as models more often than not. In 1893, she began writing and illustrating her own children's books. In 1902 the first - Peter Rabbit - was published.

In Miss Potter, the charming "biopic" starring Renée Zellweger, Potter is shown giving six paintings to her publisher and sometime fiance, Norman Warne. The real history of the paintings is less clear, but they were never published in her lifetime. Perhaps that helped to preserve them, because in those days, the original paintings were often discarded (or taken home by employees) once they had guided the printers' efforts to make the color separations needed for printing. Four of the paintings are in a museum today, but the other two are in a private collection.

When the US copyrights on most of Potter's work expired, a few book printers started including these six paintings in titles like "The Complete Peter Rabbit Collection," etc. Potter's original publisher then released images of the paintings in a "frieze", a long strip of paper you could unfold to view them all at once. Unfortunately it went out of print almost immediately and hasn't been reprinted. On the other hand, the images in the frieze look like they've been adapted for four-color printing the same way Potters' paintings adapted over a century ago - a process that reduced details and subtleties of shade. Which is to say that when I paid $6 for mine, I got my money's worth. But collectors are charging outragesous prices for them today. You are likely to be disappointed if you pay $30 or $60 for one.

About Copyrights - By the way, we are free to publish these paintings in this format in the United States because they are in public domain here. However, they are still be under copyright in other countries. If you live outside of the United States, please check the copyright laws of your country before downloading these images.

For the sake of parents who want to share these images with their children, we have added a little bit of text so this page can be read as a story book. This text is copyrighted; however you may reuse it as long as you don't charge for any product that includes it.

And I have to confess, I thought it was a shame to keep this great art and sweet story locked away from children for another century.

Please enjoy these charming paintings from Britain's foremost children's book author and illustrator.

- Paul Race

On a wet December day, the rabbits gathered for a Christmas party. Rabbits don't like rain, so they wore raincoats. One rabbit brought an umbrella.

The room was decorated for Christmas with holly on the walls. When the rabbits sat down to eat, there were not enough chairs. So some rabbits sat on baskets.

After dinner, the table was pushed aside, and the rabbits danced in a circle. One rabbit provided music by playing the pipe.

When the piper became tired, the rabbits started a game of "Blind Man's Bluff." One rabbit would be blindfolded. Then that rabbit would try to tag the other rabbits. When a rabbit was tagged, he or she would be blindfolded and the game would start again.

For dessert, the rabbits roasted apples. They tied apples to strings and hung them by the fire. The rabbit who watched them used a cabbage leaf to keep her face from getting too hot. After all of the food and exercise, some of the rabbits had trouble staying awake around the warm fireplace.

After dessert, it was time to go. The rabbits found their coats by candlelight. Then they said goodbye all around before they set out.

Other Resources

If you would like to have a compilation, try to get the most recent Warne version. This link was set up to link to that version the last time it was printed. The nice things about this one are that Warne has access to the original plates and has included "The Rabbits' Christmas Party," and other stories that have been left out of all "complete" collections so far. The big caveat is that this book is out of print, and since the 1980s, companies that have no access to the original art have published dozens of books called The Complete Works of Beatrix Potter or The Complete Peter Rabbit Collection, etc. So if you go to Amazon to buy the Warne Collection, you have no way of guaranteeing that you'll get this version. So don't wait until the week before Christmas or a birthday to order, because if they send the wrong one, you won't have time to lodge a complaint, send it back, and get the right one.

We have a big "complete" volume ourselves (one of the older ones without Warne's recent additions) and we enjoyed reading out of it to our children. This is a great way to make certain you don't overlook some of the lesser-known stories. Some folks have complained that they're too heavy for little kids to hold - a valid complaint if you don't understand the concept of you holding the book and reading it to your children. Others have complained because the cute little characters are occasionally put into dangerous situations. If you're squeamish about, say, Simpkin catching mice under tea-cups so he can snack on them later, you'll really dislike "Roly Poly Pudding." In that story - spoiler alert - a rat rolls Tom Kitten up in bread dough with the intention of baking him. (Tom gets away, of course.) Compared to Grimm or Andersen stories in which children get eaten or die of hunger, this is pretty tame stuff. But a number of modern parents seem to think all children's literature should be about as threatening as an episode of Teletubbies, and they don't mind whining when Potter's kittens and bunnies find themselves in danger. If you're one of those parents, be sure to keep this book out of reach of children and only ration out the stories as you think your children are ready for them. But, to be consistent, you'll also need to home-school, keep your kids away from all other children, books, and media, and unplug the television until they're about thirty.

Seriously, I think every home with children should have a good Beatrix Potter compilation, and as many of the individual books as there is room for on the nursery bookshelf. And every child should have these read to them until they're old enough to read them for themselves. Never mind the big words and occasional odd syntax - your kids' vocabulary and comprehension will improve by leaps and bounds if you read them books that are a tad "over their head." (My kids still remember me reading them the entire Chronicles of Narnia and The Hobbit when the youngest was far too young to read, and all three have exceptional reading skills and vocabularies.)

Not to mention that the works of Bea Potter are still superior to the vast majority of so-called "children's books" available today. Twenty years from now, 98% of the books that are currently on the "Children's" shelves in any bookstore will be forgotten and long since out of print. But Peter Rabbit, Tom Kitten, Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddleduck, Miss Tiggywinkle, and even Pipkin will still be around to charm future generations.

If you've been reading our pages, you know that we have more articles planned, and a lot on our plate, so keep checking back. And contact us with any questions or suggestions you have in the meantime.

Paul Race

www.familychristmasonline.com

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