Miffy is a picture book character in the form of a small female rabbit drawn by Dick Bruna. Her original Dutch name is Nijntje [nɛɪ̯ncǝ] which stems from a toddler's pronunciation of the word "konijntje" meaning "little rabbit".
Miffy was created in 1955, after Dick Bruna had been telling his one-year-old son Sierk stories about a little rabbit they had seen earlier in the dunes, while on holiday at Egmond aan Zee. Miffy became a girl after Bruna decided that he wanted to draw a dress and not trousers on his rabbit. Depending on the story, Miffy can be a baby or 4 years old.
At first Miffy looked like a toy animal, with floppy ears, but by 1963 she looked like the way we see Miffy today. Miffy is drawn in a very minimalist style, requiring only a few lines and one or two primary colors. There are some colors that are never used, and Bruna can be picky about a certain shade of color, brown and grey for example, and will search for it until he is happy. Even though the things that he draws are not realistic, they are instantly recognisible, and Miffy is obviously a rabbit.
There are now almost 30 titles for Miffy, and many more for the other characters. Dick Bruna has produced almost 100 books.
The Miffy books each contain sixteen pages of story. Each page has one illustration and four lines of verse, the last word of the second line rhymes with the last of the fourth. They are written about things that children can understand, and situations they will face such as going to the hospital and going to school, and they always have a happy ending. Some books have no text at all, such as Miffy's Dream
The books are printed in small format. Dick Bruna considers it important that his audience feels that his books are there for them, not for their parents. Most Miffy books have an advisory reading level of age 4 to 8 years.
Dick Bruna's books have now been translated into 40 different languages, and over 80 million copies have been sold all over the world. He has won many awards for his books, such as the Golden Brush in 1990 for Boris Bear and the Silver Brush for Miffy In The Tent in 1996. In 1997 he was awarded the Silver Slate for Dear Grandma Bunny, a book where Miffy's Grandmother dies.
The other characters that appear in the books are her family: Miffy's parents, her Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Alice, and her Uncle Bob, who appears in Miffy Goes Flying. A new brother or sister for Miffy is introduced in Miffy And The New Baby. She also has many friends, Boris and Barbara Bear, who first appeared in 1989 and are boyfriend and girlfriend, Poppy Pig, who appeared in 1977, and her niece Grunty, Snuffy, who appeared in 1969, and other bunnies such as Aggie and Melanie.
Miffy was designed as a children's book character, but the design is now used on many other things like clothes, stationery, toys, glasses, household items etc.
Miffy has been appearing on TV since 2003, in a show named after her that airs on children's television channels such as Treehouse in Canada and Noggin in the U.S..
Miffy statue at the Nijntjepleintje in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Many think that Miffy is Japanese, because the line style is also used in Hello Kitty and her friends. In addition, the Miffy brand is popular in Japan and there is a lot of Japanese-made Miffy merchandise. In Bruna's hometown, Utrecht, there is a square named after Nijntje, the Nijntjepleintje (lit: Nijntje Little Square, to retain the rhyme) and in 2006, the Centraal Museum opened a permanent exhibition, the "Dick Bruna Huis".
Miffy celebrated her fiftieth birthday in 2005. This has been celebrated in cities across the globe, for example in the Manchester Art Gallery in England.
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