Anthropomorphic rabbits and destruction in picture books: encouraging the child reader to reframe traumatic experiences in Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) and Shaun Tan's The Rabbits (1998)

Abstract

Children’s picture books are known to entice and engage child readers while holding the potential to convey difficult subjects. For instance, through the intersection of text and images, Beatrix Potter’s Peter Rabbit (1902) and John Marsden and Shaun Tan’s The Rabbits (1998) feature themes of trespassing and disorientation, violence and death, unbridled desire and consumption, and to some extent, a didactic message derived from a traumatic experience. Moreover, although the complex simplicity of Potter’s Peter Rabbit contrasts against the oppressive fullness of Marsden and Tan’s The Rabbits (1998), they both depict anthropomorphic rabbits who negatively affect the natural environment and in turn themselves, with differing degrees of recovery in their endings.

This essay will delve into the role and nature of anthropomorphic rabbits in their consumption of the natural environment and how they cope with the traumatic experiences that ensue. Each text emphasises the child’s ability to pick up on unspoken visual cues so that they can question the narratives presented to them and consider alternate perspectives within the gaps. This raises questions on the extent that authors can help child readers navigate the nuances of distressing subjects that adults themselves often grapple with, highlighting children’s picture books as literature that manoeuvres between delightful and thought-provoking spaces.