the tale of tom kitten by beatrix potter

It is Peter Rabbit who goes out on his adventure rather than one of his better-behaved sisters.

But Beatrix Potter did not subvert the stereotype that girl children are well-behaved while boy children are mischievous and interesting. The Tale of Tom Kitten is equally the tale of Tom’s sisters, Mittens and Moppet. the child characters end up back inside the home, though their freedom has not been fully curtailed - they will find a way to have fun. The story starts off with the child characters constricted by the requirements of polite society, then evolves into an unsupervised carnivalesque adventure. Tourists to the Lake District can visit Hill Top, Potter’s seventeenth century farm house, known to fans as “Tom Kitten’s house”. After the success of Tom Kitten, Warne was approached by a company who wanted to make a musical version.īeatrix dismissed this idea as “considerable twaddle”. Contemporary picture books are full of all sorts of lovable animals from every classification, but Beatrix Potter was paving the way and her publisher was testing the waters.Īlthough Potter succeeded in creating lovable frogs, and hedgehogs, her publisher was right about cats. She made the background illustrations particularly beguiling to compensate for the ick factor of the frog.

In contrast, Beatrix had a hard time selling the concept of Jeremy Fisher.

It seems fluffy mammals are an easier sell. It was Beatrix’s publisher Harold Warne who thought cats would make good characters for one of her picture books. Maurice Sendak: ‘He Saw It, He Liked It, He Ate It’

The tale of tom kitten by beatrix potter