PUBLICATIONS : After 50 Years, ‘Pat the Bunny’ Still Touchstone

For a lot of new parents, the first sign of intelligent life comes when the baby--heretofore a drooling blob--lifts its teeny-weeny finger and lightly touches a furry bunny. (As in: “Judy can pat the bunny. Now you pat the bunny.”)

Yesssssss! Mom and Dad quietly cheer. Little Precious can do something other than eat, poop and sleep.

And what if Little Precious doesn’t? More than a few parents have panicked after their 10th suggestion to “Pat the damn bunny!” goes unheeded.

Is it too early to hire a tutor for bunny patting?

This may seem neurotic, but this isn’t just any book. After more than 50 years in print, “Pat the Bunny” continues to be an important development touchstone, so to speak, that babies are people too.

Whole generations have cooed as they imitated characters Paul and Judy lifting a piece of blue cloth in a game of peekaboo, peering into a miniature mirror, touching Daddy’s scratchy beard (actually a piece of sandpaper) and putting a finger through Mommy’s (cardboard) ring.

With 200,024 copies sold last year, “Pat the Bunny” remains a best seller--second only in all-time sales to “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.” Which may have philosophers pondering: What’s with rabbits? But really, who cares?

According to a press release from Golden Books, which publishes the perennial “Pat,” 2,266 yards of white acrylic fur for the bunny--enough fur to coat and warm about 1 1/4 miles of the Alaskan landscape--is used every year in “Pat the Bunny” books.

“Pat the Bunny” has been such a huge success that it has inspired not only imitators but a whole “pat” genre of touch-and-feel books.

The style has been so enduringly popular that ‘90s publicists have been know to refer to the late Dorothy Kunhardt, author of “Pat the Bunny,” as the originator of the “interactive children’s book.”

Kunhardt, who died in 1979, certainly would have gotten a laugh out of that one, says her daughter, Edith Kunhardt, author of “Pat the Cat,” “Pat the Puppy” and 60 other non-pat children’s books.

“The genius of ‘Pat the Bunny’ is that it allows babies to do what they are just discovering they can do--touch, smell, look,” says Kunhardt, 57. “I’m not sure it’s any more complicated than that.”

Dorothy Kunhardt began writing children’s books to support her family after her husband lost his job during the Depression. Her first big hit was 1934’s “Junket Is Nice,” with crazy drawings of people guessing what an old man was eating out of a bowl. It sold a million copies in its first year.

In 1940, Kunhardt wrote a book for her baby Edith, the youngest of four children. She took paper and pencils and drew the simple figures of Paul and Judy and the itinerant bunny.

In the first edition, Judy could make her doll’s ball squeak; in the second edition, Judy could shake Mommy’s button box (“Rattle rattle go the buttons”). By the third edition, the squeaker and the buttons were gone and the mirror and flowers had appeared.

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During an interview in her Park Avenue apartment, Edith Kunhardt, who grew up in New Jersey, talked about the enormous effort her mother put into researching, drawing and writing her books. In particular, she recalled the research for a now out-of-print book, “Billy the Barber.”

“I remember she went visiting a barber school where students were learning by shaving balloons,” Kunhardt says. “If the balloon popped, they failed.”

Kunhardt had no intention of becoming an author herself--although she was married until 1971 to the son of Lavina Davis, a well-known children’s book writer and author of “Hobbyhorse Hill.” After her divorce, Kunhardt worked as an editor at Golden Books.

“I considered Mother the writer,” she says. “I was the editor.”

But after her mother died, Kunhardt took up the craft and her mother’s passion for research. She tells delightful stories of getting up at 3 a.m. to follow a milkman on his route and of spending time with a family living on a Long Island farm for “I Want to Be a Farmer.”

After writing 20 books for different publishers, Golden Books approached her in 1984 to write a sequel to “Pat the Bunny.” At first, she resisted.

“I felt ‘Pat the Bunny’ should stand on its own,” she says. “But then I came to feel that there was a reason to publish a companion. It would enhance rather than compete if it was by me.”

Although she had never illustrated a book, she decided to give it a try for her mother’s legacy. In fact, Martha and Neddy of “Pat the Cat,” who do such modern things as go to the ATM with their parents and scratch and sniff ginger snaps, look like urbane cousins of Paul and Judy.

Last year, Kunhardt wrote “Pat the Puppy,” which is not only updated, it’s downright politically proper: Grandpa makes brownies; Grandma jogs, and Tom and Sarah are invited to help Grandma unfasten her Velcro sneakers.

“I didn’t do that to be politically correct,” Kunhardt says. “But I also didn’t want Grandma to be baking brownies.”

Instead of displaying expensive coffee-table books in her living room, Kunhardt has artfully laid out all her “Pat” books, as well as a hardback about Abe Lincoln, a Kunhardt obsession. Kunhardt’s grandfather owned one of the largest collections of Lincoln photographs; her mother was a Lincoln scholar. Her brother Philip, a former managing editor of Life magazine, wrote a television series with his son about the former President.

In 1990, following the death of her son, Neddy (he died of a bacterial infection at age 27), Edith Kunhardt briefly put aside her career in children’s literature. Although she admits that her best tribute to her son was naming one of the characters “Neddy” in “Pat the Cat,” she is also writing an inspirational book about his life.

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Since writing “Pat the Puppy” last year, Kunhardt doesn’t rule out taking the “Pat” legacy into the 21st Century.

One thing she does rule out--vehemently--is the notion that the popularity of her mother’s classic has nothing to do with its compelling story line or appearance.

Perhaps so many copies are sold because families buy multiple copies?

One of the few facts “Pat the Bunny” publicists don’t supply is the average number of copies owned by the average family or, better yet, the statistical evidence of what is destroyed first: the peekaboo flap or Judy’s book, as in: “Judy can read her book. Now you read Judy’s book.”

“I’m aware that people buy two or three copies,” Kunhardt says. “I don’t like to think of people pulling them apart.”

Well, perhaps. But Little Precious isn’t quite “people” just yet.