Pat the Bunny
A teacher’s look at why this book belongs in the Lap Listeners stage.
Why it fits Lap Listeners (for babies in their first year, when books are about your voice, not the plot)
The original touch-and-feel book, inviting babies to pat fur, peek behind cloth, and smell flowers. It treats a book as something a baby does, not just hears. Eighty years on, it still earns its keep on the first shelf.
What makes it special
It invented the idea that a book could be a toy without stopping being a book. The illustrations are almost naive — flat, pastel, mid-century simple — which keeps all attention on the doing: patting, peeking, sniffing. Eighty years of technology later, nothing on a screen can replicate the feel of that fur.
About Dorothy Kunhardt
Dorothy Kunhardt (1901–1979) invented the interactive baby book. Pat the Bunny (1940) — with its fur to pat, mirror to find, and flowers to sniff — was decades ahead of its time and remains one of the best-selling children's books ever.
She made the original prototype by hand for her youngest daughter Edith, cutting and pasting the touchable pieces herself; publishers initially had no idea what shelf such an object belonged on.
Also by this author: Pat the Cat · Tickle the Pig
More from “Touch, Pat, Peek”
This book is part of The Best Books for Babies: 30 Teacher Picks (Lap Listeners) in our guide The Best Children’s Books by Age — 120 books chosen by the Montessori-certified teachers at Creative Minds Montessori in Frisco, TX. Come see how we build readers →
Nobody paid for this review — not the author, not the publisher — and the store link above earns us nothing. Our only interest is the reader this book fits.