Happy Birthday, Peter Rabbit and Friends

In 1902 a young rodent hopped to life in the pages of a cautionary tale. His name was Peter, and he was to become the most celebrated rabbit since the Easter Bunny. Now, upon his 75th birthday, the little creature betrays no signs of age--or, for that matter, maturity. Nor do Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Tom Kitten or any of the other animals in the watercolor menagerie of Beatrix Potter. The writer was a victim of Victorian repression --she did not leave home until the age of 47--and her prose is marked with arch names and marred with punishments for the nonconformist. Her artwork is another matter: from childhood, Beatrix commanded a delicate palette and an irrepressible whimsy. Her meticulous brushwork animated an entire barnyard world. The early Disney derives from her fantasies. So do the shenanigans of Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck --as well as the anthropomorphic enchantments of many current children's books.

Yet none of those works seem to resonate quite so deeply in the world of childhood. In a market where the purchase of 10,000 copies constitutes a bestseller, the Potter titles (23 volumes; Frederick Warne; $2.95 each) continue to sell at the rate of some 300,000 copies a year. Adults often complain that Beatrix Potter's minibooks have grown archaic and irrelevant. Children know better; for them there will always be some chamber of the mind where it is 1902 and where, if a stick awaits, so does a carrot at the end of a long day's mischief.

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