Clockwise from top left: Rabbit hOle office manager Mary Clara Hutchinson in the Great Green Room rocker; portraying Perez’s unfortunate end in Pura Belpré’s Perez y Martina; the Rabbit hOle building; and the Last Stop on Market Street bus. All photos courtesy of the Rabbit hOle except where noted. Map by Getty Images/RiverNorthPhotography

Once upon a time in Kansas City, MO, there was an incredible children’s bookstore. All children’s bookstores are, by definition, incredible—but the Reading Reptile was original in a different sense. The store’s owners, Debbie Pettid and Pete Cowdin, made the Reading Reptile remarkable.

“I vividly remember meeting these two kid-book brilliant, sales-savvy, event-goofy owners and their raucous family of kids and thinking, ‘I really like these people and what they are up to,’” says Jon Scieszka, the first National Ambassador of Young People’s Literature (2008–09). “Deb was always making drop-dead gorgeous papier-mâché models of kid-book art, perfectly bringing anyone’s style to 3-D life. The store was completely covered with kid-book characters.”

The Reading Reptile closed in 2016. But before the store shut its doors for the last time, Pettid and Cowdin had experienced a game-changing moment, years before, in a museum, that gave them a vision for the future.

“I don’t know the year precisely, but when we walked into the City Museum in St. Louis in the early aughts with our kids for the first time, it was an epiphany,” says Cowdin. “It was the epiphany. The City Museum is a singular vision, perpetrated by a madman bent on creating an experience that seems impossible and cannot be described, only enjoyed. It was as if we had walked into Borges’s Library of Babel, if the Library of Babel had been reimagined in an old shoe factory and all of the books were replaced with found objects. I know that we were thinking the same thing at the same time—what if there was a place like this, but it was built around stories?”

Visiting other venues sharpened Pettid and Cowdin’s focus: to create a building and experience unlike any other in the world. A fully immersive space celebrating picture books by allowing kids to physically enter into them. Not a standard museum. Not an exploratorium. An “Explor-a-Storium.”

So, when their youngest child was about 12 and the rest were in college and beyond, and the two parents had grown tired of the grind of retail, “We thought now or never,” Pettid says. “Nothing to lose.”

Welcome to the Rabbit hOle.
 

From the left: Through reeds, a view of Frog and Toad is adjacent to critters from I Want My Hat Back; Fabricator Scott Hobart perfects a Hats for Sale display.

165,000 square feet of immersion

It’s difficult to truly describe the scope of this space. Imagine, if you will, an old, abandoned ex-warehouse, a full four stories tall, located in the Iron District of North Kansas City. Visible from its windows, cars on nearby highways I-29 and I-35 zoom past (and for their part, drivers get a view of the neon pink bunnies atop the Rabbit hOle’s roof). The outside could be any old dinosaur of abandoned industry so common in metropolitan areas. But inside is where the magic happens.

The Rabbit hOle is slated to open in September 2023, but when the 2022 ALSC (Association for Library Services to Children) Institute was held in Kansas City in November, it seemed like the perfect time to offer a sneak peek to people who would truly appreciate it.

Once inside, the attendees were given a chance to explore the immersive exhibits. This included a particularly special moment where we received a special chance to visit the Great Green Room—the very same room seen throughout that Margaret Wise Brown classic Goodnight Moon, illustrated by Clement Hurd.

Because of its forced perspective and attention to detail, walking into this 3-D chamber truly does feel like you’re strolling into a fictional space. Imagine picking up the telephone in the room and hearing Clement Hurd’s son, Thatcher Hurd, reading the book. Imagine snuggling in the bunny’s bed, rocking in the old lady’s rocking chair, even finding a secret passageway behind the fireplace.

Now imagine four floors and 165,000 square feet of space filled with such exhibits.

Picture being able to hop on the back of a tiger and spin round and round as part of a Sam and the Tigers pedal-powered merry-go-round. Or seeing My Father’s Dragon soaring above your head or getting to stick your arm up the nose of No, David! (and finding something in there). You can even take a seat on the bus from Last Stop on Market Street.

“The Rabbit hOle at its best will be a magic trick, where a book regains its immediacy,” says Cowdin. “Nobody can describe the power of books. But you can feel it. And at the Rabbit hOle, that will happen collectively.”

From the left: Brian Selznick with Pettid; The No, David! display, with pickable nose.

A work in progress

The Rabbit hOle’s Instagram reveals the vast array of artists and designers who have come to work on it over the years. Cowdin and Pettid have been in Kansas City for decades, allowing them to forge connections with artists of every stripe. Indeed, the sheer breadth of talent they have at their fingertips is remarkable. Digital designers, sculptors, carpenters, and fabricators make up the 25 to 30 local artists employed by the space over the years. The Rabbit hOle also

Stop that, Scieszka!  Photo of Jon Scieszka courtesy of Betsy Bird

worked with the Kansas City Art Institute to forge a partnership around internships, summer intensives, and career placement. It is thanks to their efforts that the interactive exhibits are so good.

The idea is that a child will enter “an immersive literary experience, both preserving and celebrating children’s literature,” says Scieszka, who serves on the governing board.

Having toured a number of different kinds of museums and exhibit spaces over the years, Cowdin and Pettid much preferred places where kids were allowed to touch, climb, and generally play like the children they are. Here, kids will have a chance to throw themselves bodily into their favorite books. On top of that, the Rabbit hOle intends to create a letterpress print shop and bindery, story and writing lab, resource library and reading room, full-service bookstore, and makerspace.

So what’s the danger here? Nostalgia’s great, but isn’t there a risk of only honoring the books of the past, rather than highlighting the amazing works coming out today? Absolutely. With that in mind, the Rabbit hOle eschews the wholly historical. Newer titles rub elbows with older ones. This means that both children and their guardians may run into something immediately familiar and then meet a book they’ve never encountered before. A grandparent may be delighted to see Little Toot or Perez y Martina, while their grandchild interacts with the animals in I Want My Hat Back. Little wonder that the Rabbit hOle’s National Advisory Council includes creators like Brian Selznick, Shane Evans, Kate DiCamillo, Linda Sue Park, Daniel Handler, and others.

Artists and their families have had input on the exhibits too. For example, a large portion of the space will be dedicated to the works of John Steptoe. To get it right, Pettid and Cowdin have worked a great deal with Bweela Steptoe, John Steptoe’s daughter, as well as Caldecott Award winner Javaka Steptoe, John’s son, in order to make the perfect tribute to the groundbreaking creator.

A journey up the river (in this case, up the stairs) inspired by art from My Father’s Dragon.

Always evolving

Rabbit hOle funding—more than $15 million to date—has come from local individuals and foundations, regional foundations, and thousands of grassroots supporters from across the country. Marny and John Sherman, owners of the Kansas City Royals, are the biggest supporters, gifting more than $2 million.

Additional work is underway in a fabrication facility at the building called RAB FAB. From metallurgy to woodworking and plaster, from a foam shop to a model shop, all manner of techniques come to the fore when making the space’s exhibits.

Not that it will ever, truly, be done. “It will always be evolving and growing with the great stories added to children’s literature every year,” Scieszka says. “And I don’t see the Rabbit hOle as filling a niche. I see it like Copernicus’s understanding of the sun as the center of our solar system. Like Einstein’s discovery of the relativity of space-time. I see the Rabbit hOle radically and joyously changing the way we will celebrate the deep and goofy importance of children’s literature.”

Betsy Bird blogs at “A Fuse #8 Production” (slj.com/fuse8).