Every enduring classic of children’s literature carves its distinct path from the beginning through the middle toward an invocation of “the end.” So does North Kansas City’s The Rabbit Hole.
Open since March, the storybook museum invites kids of all ages into the wild, wondrous heart of great storytelling. Here, “visitors become explorers in an immersive, multi-sensory, narrative landscape filled with discoverable environments,” as the museum’s website notes.
The beginning of any personal story at The Rabbit Hole splits into two chapters: one mundane, the other mysterious. A quick stop at the ticketing desk offers a warm welcome and quick lay of the land. Then, visitor-explorers burrow into constructed tunnels that offer the first fulfillment of the museum’s name.
This rabbit hole is not spooky, but curious and cryptic in a childlike way. Blue lights guide you through the otherwise dark maze, revealing lines from stories grafted into the faux earth. Visitors enjoy chances to peek through portals at the animated story of Fox Rabbit, the museum’s “true founder.”
From these tunnels, you emerge into a grand middle, populated by stories stretching across eras, styles and themes. Here, you’ll encounter worlds first inhabited by Shel Silverstein’s stanzas and Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline,” by “Strega Nona” and the creaturely creations of Jon Klassen — and here you’ll enjoy their collision.
Let’s save and not spoil the ending, enjoying these first two sections a little longer.
Opening The Rabbit Hole
Here, we rely on other storytellers. A KCUR report from earlier this year identifies Fox Rabbit’s truest collaborators. Deb Pettid and Pete Cowdin, longtime owners of Reading Reptile, a children’s bookstore in Kansas City, invested six years of creative equity into opening The Rabbit Hole.
The space, as a national NPR article details, covers 150,000 square feet of former warehouse; it’s not unlike St. Louis’ City Museum, but without the more danger-defying elements. More than 20 artists and fabricators work to recreate the magical elements of these classic stories, NPR’s Katie Currid reported. And it shows, separating The Rabbit Hole from seemingly similar spots.
“There’s so much repetition, there’s so much sameness, because most of the exhibits and most of the museums around the country for children are built by a handful of design companies,” Cowdin told Currid. “All those things are fine, but I do think that there’s room for a different kind of experience.”
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One family’s experience of The Rabbit Hole
Prior to a recent visit, my wife — ever one step ahead — guided our family through a partial list aligned with the museum’s exhibits. Still, the span and kind spirit of The Rabbit Hole provoked continual surprise, both in the familiar and unanticipated.
Here, my son experienced the weight of marvel. Stories once told to him from paper-thin pages became thick and present in his world. At The Rabbit Hole, he lived out a series of verbs: climbing, sliding, exclaiming, grinning.
With the corresponding books available in each exhibit, he was able to hoist a copy of Vera Williams’ lovely “A Chair for My Mother” while sitting in a replica chair. He took storybook stairs two at a time, descended firehouse poles and lounged in replica bathtubs. At a sort of pop-in bookstore celebrating Black authors, he loudly pronounced names he recognized with clear glee.
And here, my eyes — alight and overwhelmed in the best way — met reminders that every great story arrives with fine print and atomized detail. In a room designed after Robert McCloskey’s classic “Blueberries for Sal,” I couldn’t get over how each artistic touch coaxed and celebrated the story’s dimensionality.
Two sides of the same wonder; two ways into the same stories.
We laughed in recognition upon coming across the perpetually beleaguered peddler from “Caps for Sale” as well as the monkey puppets taunting him — and us — in good humor. Examining another monkey named Curious George’s world recreated in miniature caused me to whisper “wow” more than once.
The artists quite literally animating The Rabbit Hole through painting, sculpture, and video deserve great praise. No article feels cheap, no corner cuts toward pastiche; the style and soul of these great books are rendered with authenticity and true affection.
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One great beauty of The Rabbit Hole, as our family found and as Cowdin told Currid, is there’s no one way to move through the space. Walk a straight line, fold figure-eight loops back on each other, skip in diagonal — any and every route yields delight.
“We’re not telling parents and children how to use the space and what they should [do], we’re asking them to explore, and to find the books that are there and to find the exhibits and to experience exhibits and then to come together again around the book to read the book,” Cowdin said. “The whole goal of the project is to bring young people — but also parents and educators — closer to the story.”
Coming to ‘the end’
Like any museum worth its salt, The Rabbit Hole exits through a bookstore and gift shop. Though, yet again, this space conveys more meaning than most. Exhibited books share space with other children’s gems. Adult literature, including the work of national treasures like James Baldwin, 21st-century novels and fresh works of nonfiction, is also available for sale.
But the true end of The Rabbit Hole is the great green room of Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd’s “Goodnight Moon.” You must take off your shoes to enter the low-lit, cozy space, which features items from the story — including an actual bed my son helped himself into.
The lovely room almost made me like the classic story, I joked to my wife (I still don’t know what to do with the “goodnight nobody” and mush of it all). And it brought a fitting, well, bookend to the experience. Rabbits all the way down.
Moving through The Rabbit Hole, we caught glimpses of exhibits yet to come. My family and I thrilled, almost in unison, at signs of a treasured favorite: Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson’s “Last Stop on Market Street.” We’ll certainly be back to spend time with CJ and his grandma, Trixie and the Sunglass Man, to bask together in the beauty of broken things.
But even if The Rabbit Hole never added a drop of paint, we’d return. Like the best books, the museum offers plenty to revisit, to rehearse, to rediscover as if for the first time. In this way, it’s one grand story made up of stories.
The Rabbit Hole is located at 919 E. 14th St. in North Kansas City. Learn more, including hours and ticket prices, at https://www.rabbitholekc.org/.
Aarik Danielsen is the features and culture editor for the Tribune. Contact him at adanielsen@columbiatribune.com or by calling 573-815-1731. He’s on Twitter/X @aarikdanielsen.
