The Velveteen Rabbit - What Is "Real"?

We are using The Velveteen Rabbit and Philosophy to kick off our new Philosophy topic. This product is available at TpT.

"The Velveteen Rabbit" is also included in our Junior Great Books anthology, so I have five copies of it. On Tuesday and on Wednesday, I read them the story at snack time. Then the children paired up and each group got a copy of the text, where they could underline sentences or passages that had to do with the question of reality -- being real, what it means to be real, etc.

Then we had our first discussion for this lovely Metaphysics topic:

What does it mean for something to be real?

FR - It can come into contact with your body, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can taste it if it's edible. Even things that you think you see they're still real to you.

Some of the things that are real, it means that everyone's felt, everyone's touched, everyone's smelt the lilies outside.

EO - I wasn't thinking about anything else except toys. I think that there's two kinds of real.

The first kind is when something and you both believe that you are real, like the boy in the Velveteen Rabbit saying "You mustn't say that. He isn't a toy. He's REAL!" Then the rabbit and he first believed that the Velveteen Rabbit was real.

Then when he [the rabbit] actually cried, that was the transition from one kind of real to another kind of real, like having a heart beating and moving without clockwork.

AAR - I was thinking more of like living. So like when he had the first tear, it's a real tear, he's starting to become real (living). A toy can't cry because it doesn't have the inside parts like the tissue and bone and the things. That's also a part of being real; you have other things inside of you instead of just stuffing and sawdust. That tear was the first real thing that actually happened to him.

I keep saying "real" but it's really "alive." If he wasn't real then he wouldn't really need hind legs so that he can jump about and move by himself.

Z - Are you saying that he wouldn't be real if he didn't have hind legs at the end when the fairy turned him real?

And he could move the whole time.

[citing the text on p.116] "Strange people came and went in the nursery, and a light burned all night, and through it all the little Velveteen Rabbit lay there, hidden from sight under the bedclothes, and he never stirred, for he was afraid that if they found him someone might take him away, and he knew that the Boy needed him."

It says the rabbit was afraid to move, if they found him someone might take him away, he never stirred... so he could move his front paws.

And what about air, what about those gasses that you can't smell or taste?

FR - You can do testing and be positive it's real.

What would you test for to prove that air is real?

FR - Air is real. If air wasn't real then we couldn't breathe it in. The gasses are mixed into it.

EO - Are you saying that air is real because we can breathe it?

FR - Air is real because there's gasses and different chemicals mixed to make oxygen and oxygen is mixed in with the air, and we can breathe it in.

Z - Does that mean that outer space is not real beause space doesn't have air in it?

AAR - It's just a pit, it's just a black pit basically. Space is a non-ending black pit.

FR - Space is real because you can bend space. That's what scientists do when they bring black holes down to earth.

AAR - Space is nothing-ness that we just named, so it is nothing.

Is nothingness real or not real?

AAR - It's empty and it doesn't have anything real inside of it.

FR - Space is real. You can bend space and if space wasn't real then we wouldn't be real.

They still had so much to say, but we stopped there, tabled the discussion to be continued another day, and I gave them some time to write and draw their ideas about What Is "Real"? in their Philosophy Journals.

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