Time for true confessions. Childhood memories can be a fraud. I always remembered Peter Rabbit fondly. As I started researching Beatrix Potter, it was with that cozy feeling that I had learned to read partly with the help of this bunny-behaving-badly. Enter my sister Kay, five years older and equally wiser who broke the news, "We had some book called "Little Peter Cottontail." Warm, fuzzy bubble burst. My introduction to Peter Rabbit was a knockoff.
There's an "Importance of Copyright" lesson here, as Potter's publishers failed to register the Peter Rabbit copyright in America, resulting in a spate of piracies including this by Thornton W. Burgess. But there is also some sort of lesson in following your interests wherever they come from, whether authentic or contrived. All writing is falling down a rabbit hole, and even if the rabbit hole was dug by a slightly different bunny.
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