Product Description

The country bunny attains the exalted position of Easter Bunny in spite of her responsibilities as the mother of twenty-one children.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #217066 in Books
• Published on: 1939-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 48 pages

Review
"It is difficult to believe that this very modern feminist tale was originally written in 1939. A gem of a fantasy in which kindness and cleverness win out over size and brawn." -- Review

Review

About the Author

DuBose Heyward (August 31, 1885 – June 16, 1940) was an American author best known for his 1924 novel Porgy. With his wife Dorothy, whom he met at the MacDowell Colony in 1922, he was co-author of the non-musical play adapted from the novel. His play was the foundation of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. A descendant of Thomas Heyward, Jr., who was a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence as a representative of South Carolina, DuBose became a Charleston insurance and real-estate salesman with a long-standing and serious interest in literature. He became financially independent and abandoned his business to devote full time to writing.

Biographer James M. Hutchisson characterizes Porgy as "the first major southern novel to portray blacks without condescension" and states that the libretto to Porgy and Bess was largely Heyward's work. Others, however, have noted that the characters in Porgy, though viewed sympathetically, are still viewed for the most part as stereotypes.  Many critics over time felt that Heyward was very accurate in his portrayal of the Southern black.

Heyward and his wife Dorothy spent many years in Charleston scrutinizing the blacks of that area. He also participated in an amateur Southern traditional singing society open to anyone whose family had lived on a plantation, whether as owner or slave.   In Charleston Heyward found a majority of the inspiration for his book, including what would become the setting (Catfish Row) and the main character (a disabled man named Porgy). Literary critics cast Heyward as an authority on Southern literature. They later said, "Heyward's attention to detail and reality of the Southern black's lifestyle was not only sympathetic but something that no one had ever seen done before." During his time in Charleston, DuBose taught at the Porter Military Academy.

The non-musical play "Porgy" opened on Broadway in 1927, eight years before the opera Porgy and Bess. It was a considerable success—more so at the time than the Gershwin opera. It was the play that was used as the opera's libretto. The novel differs greatly from the play, especially in the ending. The plotline of the opera follows the play almost exactly. Large sections of dialogue from the play were set to music for the recitatives in the opera.

In his introduction to the section on DuBose Heyward in Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation But Missed the History Books, Stephen Sondheim wrote:

"DuBose Heyward has gone largely unrecognized as the author of the finest set of lyrics in the history of the American musical theater - namely, those of Porgy and Bess. There are two reasons for this, and they are connected. First, he was primarily a poet and novelist, and his only song lyrics were those that he wrote for Porgy. Second, some of them were written in collaboration with Ira Gershwin, a full-time lyricist, whose reputation in the musical theater was firmly established before the opera was written. But most of the lyrics in Porgy - and all of the distinguished ones - are by Heyward. I admire his theater songs for their deeply felt poetic style and their insight into character. It's a pity he didn't write any others. His work is sung, but he is unsung."

The novel Porgy became a bestseller in 1926. Heyward continued to explore writing with another novel set in Catfish Row, Mamba's Daughters (1929), which he and Dorothy again adapted as a play. His novella Star Spangled Virgin was about the breakdown of the small farming economy of an island in the Virgin Islands.

He also wrote the screenplay for the adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's The Emperor Jones (1933). His work included a children's book, The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, published in 1939.

Marjorie Flack (22 October 1897 - August 29, 1958) was an artist and writer of children's picture books. Flack was born in Greenport, Long Island, New York in 1897.  She was best known for The Story about Ping (1933), popularized by Captain Kangaroo, and for her stories of an insatiably curious Scottish terrier named Angus. Her first marriage was to artist Karl Larsson; she later married poet William Rose Benet.

Customer Reviews

powerful and true
This is the most powerful book I have ever read.

The boastful jackrabbits, the aristocratic snobby rabbits, and the male rabbits who laugh when little country bunny tells them that she will grow up to become to be one of the revered Easter Bunnies - are all proven wrong.

Little country bunny grows up, has children, and through the pure goodness of her heart and common sense catches the eye of the Wise Old Grandfather bunny.

Ta-da! He asks her to be an Easter Bunny! After trials and tribulations, her determination, caring, and perseverence carry her through, and she is exalted beyond her dreams by Grandfather Bunny. She is wise, and nice, and very humble.

I love this story because is beautifully written and teaches that those with good and kind hearts, who work hard and persevere, will triumph. Being rich, big, high-born, young, male, does not matter where it really counts - all that matters is what is in your heart.

I first read this as a minority child growing up in a rural community. Now I am a professional in a large city. This book made a difference for me.

Through a Six-Year-Old's Mind
I was born in 1940. This book was read to me once in first grade. I remembered not only the story, but the beautiful illustrations. Twenty years later I called my first grade teacher to ask for the book title so I could read it to my children. "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes," she had remembered. As I read this to my children, I saw my life had been influenced by this wonderful story. Dubose Heyward wrote one book in 1939. He wrote to tell young females that they can grow up to follow their dreams and have a family. That they can get past social expectations, and past the people who aren't cheering them on, and that we all have a special destiny if we trust ourselves enough to persist against the odds which then sets the example for our children to do the same.

A surprisingly modernist book from 1939
DuBose Heyward's 1939 classic, "The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes," is surprisingly modernist given the time period in which it was written. When so much of the world was (and is) focused on heroes and men in general, what a gentle and lovely surprise to come across a book which celebrates the rabbit--a lady rabbit!--who becomes the Easter bunny.

With elements of Aesop peeping in and out of the text (not the least of which includes the fable of the tortoise and the hare), Heyward manages to make a rabbit with 21 little children sound not only sane, but brilliant. The Country Bunny (or Little Cottontail Mother, as she is called throughout) gives her children each small chores to keep them busy, contribute to the overall quality of their shared family life, and make them feel like valued members of the group. They grow up to be sweet, cheerful, polite, and industrious bunnies, and the Country Bunny uses their fine breeding to great effect to achieve an audition for the role of Easter Bunny.

Heyward's text is inimitably enriched by the sweet pictures of artist Marjorie Flack. The bunnies are plush and adorable, the scenery idyllic, and the colors bright as Technicolor. This is a trip down Memory Lane, even for those who didn't grow up with the book, and a future memory-maker for any child who loves Easter and Easter bunnies.