After nearly a decade, children’s book lovers Pete Cowdin and Deb Pettid have finally seen their dream of an immersive museum focused on children’s tales come to life.
The Rabbit hOle (919 E. 14th Ave., North Kansas City) opened in March and is offering a hands-on, kids’ books-centric museum experience for families. Cowdin and Pettid are no strangers to children’s literature. They ran the beloved Reading Reptile children’s bookstore in Brookside until it closed in 2016. They also raised five children and made frequent trips to the City Museum in St. Louis, where they witnessed how explorable environments created unique intergenerational experiences for families. They thought, “Why has no one done this with children’s books?” and thus, the idea for The Rabbit hOle was born.
Through their tenure at the Reading Reptile, Cowdin and Pettid built strong relationships with authors, illustrators and publishers, which helped as they began working on their forthcoming immersive museum.
They began the initial steps in 2015. In the ensuing years, they raised over $15 million dollars and gained the rights for the books featured in exhibits—and then actually designed and built all of the exhibits. All exhibits are built by the couple’s in-house team of artists and fabricators to create an immersive world ripped straight from the pages of their favorite children’s stories.
“It is an immense privilege and responsibility to create exhibits based on an existing work of literature and art,” says Rabbit hOle development and grants manager Emily Hane. “We go to great lengths to not only visually match a book’s look and feel but to also capture and impart its spirit. Within the museum you’ll find a wide range of exhibits varying in type, form, scale and materials.”
Hane explains that The Rabbit hOle will never be finished—the museum will continue to grow and add exhibits. The museum currently has more than 30 exhibits on the first floor and will be adding more and opening the second floor in the near future. Eventually, they hope to fill the third and fourth floors as well as the roof.
After guests enter through Fox Rabbit’s burrow, the building is sectioned into various exhibits and experiences inspired by different children’s books, including favorites like Curious George and Goodnight Moon.
“Our mission is to create a living culture around literature, accessible to all, that will nourish, empower and inspire the reading lives of children and adults,” Hane says. “The Rabbit hOle makes Kansas City a destination for book lovers of all ages and also puts us at the forefront of those working to bring greater appreciation for the artistry and culture of children’s literature, as well as new ways to inspire a love of reading.”
The Rabbit hOle will also feature programs and workshops to help further foster a love of books among the community, including The Story Lab, which will offer a variety of writing workshops and bookmaking activities, and a letterpress Print Shop, which will be both a production facility and an educational shop.
“Overall, our programming areas are designed to create additional opportunities and access points to children’s literature,” Hane says. “Each program helps to reinforce and expand encounters visitors might have with classic children’s literature in the museum. For example, you might attend a storytime in The Lucky Rabbit Bookstore featuring a book by Pura Belpré and then attend a workshop in the Tons of Fun Room where you make puppets in the style Pura Belpré used in her own art practices. This is a great way to learn more about the authors and illustrators and to connect more deeply to their artistic practices.”
