While childhood can have memories of family vacations, an obsessively-watched cartoon or a favorite toy opened on Christmas morning, there’s something uniquely transporting about opening a book you read as a kid. Children’s books are enjoyed over and over, and remind us of times in our childhood bedrooms, sitting on an adult’s lap and the coziness of that time of focus and quietude that seems reserved only for reading time, especially in the loud, rambunctious days of childhood.
That’s why the opening of North Kansas City’s The Rabbit hOle, an immersive museum for children’s literature, is so special. It brings the characters, colors and the feeling of reading as a child to life, taking two-dimensional stories and turning them into interactive, art-filled exhibits that are anything but static.
The Rabbit hOle is a project years in the making, started by married couple Deb Pettid and Pete Cowdin, who originally owned the Reading Reptile bookstore in Kansas City. The two, who also raised five children, set out to make the nation’s only immersive museum for children’s literature in 2016, and it finally opens March 12.
The museum has secured rights and permissions to over 70 works from the last century of children’s literature. Inside, museum-goers will find exhibits for beloved characters including Curious George, Madeline, Frog & Toad and Babar the elephant, and can step into the familiar spaces such as the kitchen from “Blueberries for Sal” or the green great room from “Goodnight Moon.” They will also be introduced to lesser-known settings, such as the cliffs from “My Father’s Dragon,” or the Harlem-based bookshop from the works of late author John Steptoe, created in collaboration with his children. The museum has worked closely with the authors and illustrators and their estates, explaining their unique educational project and gaining the rights to bring these books to life.
The Rabbit hOle is located in one of North Kansas City’s many industrial areas, in a four-story 150,000 square foot building. While many cultural institutions choose to situate south of the river or in Johnson County, Rabbit hOle development and grant manager Emily Hane says that the city of North Kansas City has been instrumental in getting the museum going and is especially supportive.
“North Kansas City is certainly having a renaissance,” says Emily. “This is a project that — I don't know that it could have happened in any other place.”
She says she loves the museum’s location, joking that the nearby train tracks are an extra attraction for young children. You can see the neon rabbits atop the building from the interstate and it’s close to most pockets of Kansas City.
“You always want to have an artistic anchor in a community and The Rabbit hOle gets to kind of provide that for the Northland,” says Emily. “All the kids who come through [for] school field trips, our goal is that they leave wanting to read a book. But there's probably going to be a lot of kids who leave who are like, ‘Oh, I want to build giant tiger statues when I grow up.’ It’s going to help inspire artists, too, which I think it's really cool.”
While so many programs for children focus on children’s literacy and the ability to read, Emily says that not many programs serve to solely foster the love of reading.
“It’s our mission to inspire the reading lives of children and adults,” says Emily. “We want to be a place where kids can really discover the types of stories that they like that they've maybe never been exposed to before — whether it's because they've never seen a picture book with a kid who looks like them, or heard cultural stories that might resonate with their own household.”
Behind the robust and imaginative construction of the museum’s exhibits is a staff of two dozen fabricators, all with different specialties and backgrounds. The book exhibits range from animated shadow boxes to larger-than-life mechanized sculptures. The exhibit’s makers studied the original books carefully, paying close attention to colors, lines and illustration styles, making models of the exhibits before painstakingly bringing them to life with wood, metal, foam, concrete, paint and more.
All of the fabricators will remain employees once the museum is open because although there will be completed exhibits on opening day, The Rabbit hOle hopes to continue adding exhibits to all four floors of the building indefinitely.
One of these fabricators and artists is Kelli Harrod, who has a background in theater design. I witnessed her a month before the museum opened, painting scenes from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends.”
She said one of the hardest challenges of bringing the books to life is taking a two-dimensional page and making it into a three-dimensional object. There are some sides of characters or rooms — like the wall behind the point of view in the great green room from “Goodnight Moon” — that you never see in the books. So the fabricators derive inspiration from the author or illustrator’s real life to complete the scenes.
Above all, though, Kelli says her favorite part about the work is how much joy it brings her.
“I get to show up and have fun every day,” says Kelli.
On top of the immersive exhibits inside The Rabbit hOle, the museum will also feature a bookstore with a space for author talks, a “Tons of Fun” room for making literacy-based arts and crafts, a resource library for scholars and educators, a rotating exhibit space, a more traditional white wall museum gallery, and a story lab and print shop, with spaces for writing activities and residencies for authors and illustrators.
Emily says that the museum, overall, wants to be a rare place that celebrates the culture of children. The Rabbit hOle takes special care in making something interactive and artistic, drawing inspiration from the St. Louis’s City Museum. The exhibits are built to withstand the enjoyment of children while still being interactive and imaginative so all generations can enjoy the displays.
“Whenever you're talking about children's culture, there is this [idea of], ‘Oh, it's good enough. It's for kids, you know, just make it cheap. They don't really deserve anything beautiful,’” says Emily. “And that's the exact opposite of how The Rabbit hOle feels. We believe that kids deserve something beautiful. Yeah, it's going to be durable. Yeah, we're going to be able to sterilize it and clean it and everything. But just because it's for children, doesn't mean it is a lesser art form.”