Pat the Bunny

[Millie Webb]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine Aman" <caman at AMLAW.COM>
To: <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 3:59 PM
Subject: Re: Chai M. Potok; O'Kun


> I recently disabused an adult, named Patrick, that the childrens book
titled
> Pat The Bunny was not about a rabbit named Pat(rick). Despite his advanced
> age (30-odd), Patrick was crestfallen.


Actually, I had always assumed (even as a small child) that the book was Pat
(Verb) the Bunny, an admonition or direction for the reader.  When I started
as an assistant manager at Doubleday Books in 1993, I ran into repeated
references to the Bunny as being named "Pat", not just in customers'
conversations, but also in some written materials on the "significance" of
Pat, The Bunny in introducing more interactive children's books, where the
children got to actually do something.  Since then, it has been really
unclear most of the time I see it referenced, which meaning it is assumed to
have.  The times when you can tell, it seems to be predominantly the
name-meaning (as in about 75%).  Okay, I am WAY too interested in children's
books, but it keeps me hopping (hah!), trying to keep up with explosion in
that literary genre in the last twenty years!  -- Millie