An adventure in reading
World of picture books comes to life at children’s literature museum
On a crisp Saturday morning that screamed for adventure, a former tin can factory in North Kansas City, Missouri, thrummed with the sound of young people climbing, sliding, spinning, jumping, exploring and reading.
Yes, reading.
If you think this is a silent activity, you haven’t spent time in a first grade classroom. And if you think all indoor destinations for young people are sticky, smelly, depressing hellholes, check your assumptions at the unmarked front door.
Welcome to the Rabbit Hole, a new, decade-in-the-making museum of children’s literature founded by the only people with the stamina for such a feat: former bookstore owners. Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid are long-married artists who share the bullish determination of the Little Red Hen. They’ve transformed the hulking old building into a series of settings lifted straight from the pages of beloved picture books.
Before we get into what the Rabbit Hole is, here’s what it isn’t: a place with touch screens, a ball pit, inscrutable plaques, velvet ropes, a cloying soundtrack or adults in costumes. It doesn’t smell like graham crackers, apple juice or worse (yet). At $16 a person older than 2, it also isn’t cheap.
During opening weekend March 16, the museum was a hive of freckles and gap-toothed grins, with visitors ranging in age from newborn to well-seasoned. Cries of “Look up here!” and “There’s a path we need to take!” and “There’s Good Dog Carl!” created a pleasant pandemonium. For every child galloping into the 30,000-square-foot space, there was an adult hellbent on documenting the moment.
Did you ever have to make a shoebox diorama about your favorite book? If so, you might remember classmates who constructed move-in-ready minikingdoms kitted out with gingham curtains, clothespin people and actual pieces of spaghetti.
Cowdin, Pettid and their team are those students, all grown up.
The main floor of the Rabbit Hole consists of 40 bookthemed dioramas blown up to life-size and arranged, Ikea showroom-style, in a space the size of two hockey rinks. The one inspired by John Steptoe’s “Uptown” features a pressedtin ceiling, a faux stained-glass window and a jukebox. In the great green room from “Goodnight Moon,” you can pick up an old-fashioned phone and hear the illustrator’s son reading the story.
One fictional world blends into the next, allowing characters to rub shoulders in real life just as they do on a shelf. Visitors slid down the pole in “The Fire Cat,” slithered into the gullet of the boa constrictor in “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and lounged in a faux bubble bath in “Harry the Dirty Dog.” There are plenty of familiar faces — Madeline, Strega Nona, Babar — but just as many areas dedicated to worthy titles that don’t feature household names, including “Crow Boy,” “Sam and the Tigers,” “Gladiola Garden” and “The Zabajaba Jungle.”
“So many of these are books I use in my classroom,” said Emma Miller, a first grade teacher. “It’s immersive and beautiful. I’m overwhelmed.”
“We love opportunities to explore different sensory things for Mason,” Taylar Brown said as her toddler bolted toward “Frog and Toad.” “He has autism, so this is a perfect place for him to find little hiding holes.”
A gaggle of boys reclined on a bean bag in “Caps for Sale,” passing around a copy of the book. Identical twins sounded out “Bread and Jam for Frances” on the pink rug in the badger’s house. A 3-year-old visiting for the second time listened to her grandfather reading “The Tawny Scrawny Lion.”
Tomy Tran, a father of three from Oklahoma, has “been to some of these indoor places, and it’s more like a jungle gym. Here, my kids will go into the area, pick up the book and actually start reading it as if they’re in the story.”
All the titles scattered around the museum are available for purchase at the Lucky Rabbit, a bookstore arranged around a cozy amphitheater. Pettid and Cowdin estimate that they’ve sold one book per visitor, with about 650 guests a day following the pink bunny tracks from the parking lot.
Cowdin and Pettid have plans to expand into three more floors, adding exhibit space, a print shop, a story lab, a resource library and discovery galleries. An Automatstyle cafeteria and George and Martha-themed party and craft room will open soon. A rooftop bar is also in the works.
Of course, museum life isn’t all happily ever after. Certain visitors whined, whinged and wept, especially as they approached the exit. One weary adult said, “Charlie, we did it all.”
Then, “Charlie, it’s time to go.” And finally, “Fine, Charlie, we’re leaving you here.” Cue hysteria.
But the moral of this story — and the point of the museum, and maybe the point of reading, depending on whom you share books with — crystallized in a quiet moment in the great green room. A boy in a Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl T-shirt pretended to fall asleep beneath a fleecy blanket. Before closing his eyes, he said: “Goodnight, Grandma. Love you to the moon.”