There are plenty of walking, talking toys in children's books - but a good storyteller can breathe life into a blue kangaroo or a box of crayons without pretending they are living beings
My four-year-old has just begun asking questions about "real" and "not real". Is her soft toy Snowdog real? Are there any stories about toys coming alive that can help her to understand this?
The classic example of a story in which the author opening breathes life into an inanimate object is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, which charts the journey of a soft toy rabbit from being just one a bunch of nursery companions to something superior. It was written in 1922 and subtitled "How Toys Became Real", and one of the reasons for its enduring success is that the eponymous velveteen rabbit is itself anxious to discover what 'real' is and how you can become it. Margery Williams gives several definitions of what the word might mean.
Early on, the Rabbit asks the Skin Horse, a long term resident of the nursery cupboard, "What is REAL? … Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"'Real isn't how you are made,' said the Skin Horse. 'It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.'"
Almost a century on this explanation will probably seem too saccharine and too obviously untrue, although the book remains in print, especially in gift editions with its stunning original William Nicholson illustrations.
To avoid this untruth, authors now draw on the child's attachment to a much loved toy and belief in the special powers it holds as the way in which it can seem real without a false transmogrification.
In Rumor Godden's magical The Fairy Doll, a little girl believes that the fairy can help her overcome her lack of confidence. She wishes and, as importantly, the Fairy Doll wishes too: between them they create a magic which enables the one to help the other although they only communicate through wishes.
Similarly, in Emma Chichester Clark's Blue Kangaroo stories the connection between Lily and her soft toy companion gives him such an active role in the stories that he seems like a real play friend. In Where Are you, Blue Kangeroo, the kangaroo gets sufficiently anxious about being lost to take matters into his own hands. By hiding in the toy cupboard he avoids running the risk of being left on the bus – an experience he did not enjoy.
Throughout children's books, from the Gingerbread Man onwards children learn that the unreal can, for the purposes of a story, come alive.
Oliver Jeffers does this brilliantly in his most recent book The Day the Crayons Quit, in which each of the colours in a box of wax crayons writes its own polite but firm letter to their owner complaining of how he uses them! Maybe, through books such as these, your daughter will learn to appreciate how much-loved "things" can be brought to life through stories even if they can never become living beings.
Book doctor is always on hand to answer your questions or track down that book for you. You can reach her by email via childrens.books@guardian.co.uk
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