The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes facts for kids
1st edition cover.
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| Author | Beatrix Potter |
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| Illustrator | Beatrix Potter |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Children's literature |
| Publisher | Frederick Warne & Co. |
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Publication date
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1911 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Preceded by | The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse |
| Followed by | The Tale of Mr. Tod |
The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes is a children's book written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter. It was first published in October 1911. The story is about a squirrel named Timmy Tiptoes. Other squirrels think he is stealing nuts and trap him inside a hollow tree.
Inside the tree, Timmy meets Chippy Hackee, a friendly chipmunk. Chippy has run away from his wife and is living in the tree. He encourages Timmy to eat all the nuts stored there. Timmy eats so much that he becomes too fat to escape! Luckily, a big storm helps him get free when it breaks part of the tree. The book also compares Timmy's happy marriage to Chippy's less friendly one.
When it first came out, the book sold well. However, some people now think it is not one of Potter's best works. This is because Beatrix Potter had never seen the North American animals in the story (like the grey squirrel and chipmunk) in real life. So, her drawings of them might look a bit stiff. Also, the rhymes in the book don't really tell us much about the characters. The storm at the end is seen as a quick way to finish the story.
Some reasons for these issues might be that Potter was very busy. She was taking care of her aging parents and managing her farm, Hill Top. This left her with less time and energy for writing and drawing children's books.
Characters from the book have been made into many items. These include porcelain figures, music boxes, and other decorations.
Contents
About the Author: Beatrix Potter
Helen Beatrix Potter was born on July 28, 1866, in London, England. Her father was a barrister, and her mother was Helen Leech Potter. Beatrix was taught at home by governesses and tutors. She had a quiet childhood. She loved to read, paint, and draw. She also kept many small animals as pets. Her interest in nature grew during family holidays in Scotland, the Lake District, and at her grandparents' home in Hertfordshire.
As a young woman, Beatrix continued to paint and draw. In 1890, she had her first success selling six designs of humanized animals to a greeting card company. She wanted to have a useful life and be independent from her parents. She even thought about a career studying mycology (fungi). However, the science community at the time was mostly men, and they did not take her seriously. So, she stopped studying fungi.
How Peter Rabbit Began
In 1900, Potter rewrote a story she had made for a child friend in 1893. It was about a humanized rabbit. She made a small book like The Story of Little Black Sambo, a popular book from 1899. She printed her story herself for family and friends in December 1901.
Several publishers had said no to her book. But Frederick Warne & Co. changed their mind. They wanted to sell small children's books. They decided to publish her "bunny book" after a children's book artist named L. Leslie Brooke suggested it. Potter agreed to color her drawings. In October 1902, The Tale of Peter Rabbit was released.
Potter's Life and Later Books
Potter kept publishing books with Warne. In August 1905, she used money from her book sales and a small gift from an aunt to buy Hill Top. This was a working farm in the Lake District. For several years, she wrote and drew stories inspired by the farm, its woods, and nearby villages.
Potter usually published two books a year. But by 1910, she was very busy. She had to care for her aging parents and run her farm. Her writing and drawing started to slow down. The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse was the only book she published in 1910. She wrote to a friend in 1911 that it was hard to get her drawings done. She couldn't spend enough time sketching in the countryside.
She had planned to write a story about a pig. But she couldn't finish it. Instead, in the winter of 1910-1911, she worked on Peter Rabbit's Painting Book and wrote Timmy Tiptoes. This new story was about animals from North America.
Story Summary
The story takes place in a forest and starts with "once upon a time." Timmy Tiptoes is "a little fat comfortable grey squirrel." He lives in a nest made of leaves at the top of a tall tree with his wife, Goody.
Collecting Nuts for Winter
For several days, Timmy and Goody collect nuts in their small sacks. They store the nuts for winter and spring in hollow tree stumps near their home. Timmy wears a red jacket, and Goody wears a pink dress and apron. When the stumps are full, they use a tree-hole that used to belong to a woodpecker. The nuts fall "down – down – down inside." Goody wonders how they will get them out. Timmy tells her he will be much thinner by springtime and can fit through the hole.
The narrator explains that Timmy and Goody have many nuts because they never lose them. Most squirrels forget where they bury half their nuts. Silvertail, a very forgetful squirrel, digs up another squirrel's nuts by mistake. This causes a big fuss among the squirrels.
Timmy's Trouble
At the same time, some birds fly by singing, "Who's bin digging-up my nuts?" One bird lands near Timmy and keeps singing about digging up nuts. Other squirrels notice this. They think Timmy is stealing nuts from others. They rush at him, scratch him, and chase him up a tree. With great difficulty, they push him through the woodpecker's hole. Silvertail suggests they leave him there until he admits to stealing.
Timmy lies "stunned and still" on the pile of nuts he stored in the hollow tree. Goody searches everywhere for him. Eventually, Timmy wakes up. He finds himself in a soft, mossy bed surrounded by plenty of nuts.
Chippy Hackee's Help
Chippy Hackee, a small striped chipmunk, takes care of Timmy. Chippy mentions that nuts have been raining into the tree. He also says he "found a few buried." The chipmunk encourages Timmy to eat the nuts, and Timmy grows "fatter and fatter!"
Goody is very worried about Timmy. But she goes back to collecting nuts and hiding them under a tree root. Mrs. Hackee, Chippy's wife, comes out from under the root. She wants to know why nuts are falling into her home. The two wives complain about their runaway husbands. But Mrs. Hackee knows where her husband is because a little bird told her.
They hurry to the woodpecker's hole. They hear their husbands inside the tree singing:
- "My little old man and I fell out,
- How shall we bring this matter about?
- Bring it about as well as you can,
- And get you gone, you little old man!"
Mrs. Hackee refuses to go into the tree because her husband bites. But Goody calls to Timmy, and he comes to the hole with a kiss for her. He is too fat to squeeze through! Chippy Hackee, who is not too fat, refuses to leave and stays inside, chuckling.
Timmy's Escape
Two weeks later, a strong wind blows off the top of the tree. Timmy finally escapes! He rushes home through the rain, huddling under an umbrella with his wife.
Chippy Hackee stays in the tree stump for another week. But then a bear comes looking for nuts. Chippy decides it's time to go home. He catches a cold and is quite uncomfortable.
Timmy now keeps the family nuts "fastened up with a little padlock." In an illustration, Goody is seen outside the nest with three tiny baby squirrels. The little bird still sings to the Chipmunks, "Who's-been-digging-up my-nuts?" But no one ever answers! In the last picture, Chippy Hackee and his wife are trying to scare the bird away with their tree-leaf umbrella.
Beatrix Potter's idea of a character getting too fat to escape a tree was later used by A. A. Milne in Winnie the Pooh.
Artwork in Timmy Tiptoes
Timmy Tiptoes is special among Potter's books because it shows American animals. The main character, Timmy, is an eastern grey squirrel. These squirrels were brought from America to Britain and were becoming common around 1900. Potter likely didn't see them in the wild near her home. She probably used animals she saw at a zoo or looked at pictures in books from the Natural History Museum.
Potter might not have had live chipmunk models. She may have borrowed a pet chipmunk from a cousin. She might have decided to dress the chipmunks in clothes, which then led her to dress Timmy and Goody too. This is similar to how she drew Peter Rabbit. When Peter wears his blue jacket, he walks on two legs. When he loses it, he goes back to being an animal on all fours. Because Timmy and Chippy were not drawn from real animals in nature, their faces might not show as much emotion.
The American black bear in the story was probably drawn from a bear at the London Zoological Gardens. Potter wrote that her drawing was meant to show an American black bear, which has smooth fur like a sealskin coat. However, the bear in the illustrations also looks a bit stiff, like her drawings of humans. It doesn't have the natural grace of a real bear. This shows that Potter found it hard to draw animals she hadn't seen in their natural environment.
The forest backgrounds in the book were imagined, not drawn from real places. Because of this, they might not have the same warmth and character as the backgrounds in her other books that were inspired by the Sawrey woodlands. It seems it was difficult for Potter to write or draw clearly about subjects she hadn't observed closely.
Collectibles and Merchandise
Beatrix Potter believed her stories would become classics. She was one of the first authors to sell items based on her characters. Between 1903 and 1905, she created a Peter Rabbit doll, a board game, and wallpaper. She called these extra products "side-shows." Many more items were made over the next twenty years.
In 1947, Frederick Warne & Co. allowed Beswick Pottery to make porcelain figures of Potter's characters. Timmy Tiptoes was one of the first ten figures made in 1948. Goody Tiptoes followed in 1961, Chippy Hackee in 1979, and a figure of Timmy and Goody under an umbrella in 1986.
In 1973, The Eden Toy Company in New York City became the first American company to make stuffed plush toys of Potter characters. Timmy Tiptoes and Goody Tiptoes plush toys were released in 1975. Also in 1975, Crummles of Poole, Dorset started making small enamel boxes with Potter characters on their lids. They made a Timmy Tiptoes box that was about 1 and 5/8 inches wide.
In 1977, Schmid & Co. of Toronto and Randolph, Massachusetts, also got permission to make Beatrix Potter items. They produced a Goody Tiptoes music box, a Chippy Hackee music box that played "Feed the Birds", and a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament showing Goody with one of her babies. In the mid-1980s, an Italian company called ANRI made ornaments and figures of Timmy Tiptoes from a special material called Toriart.
Book Editions and Translations
As of 2010, all 23 of Beatrix Potter's small books were still being printed. You could buy them in a large book with all the stories or in sets. Timmy Tiptoes is available in paperback, as a board book (for very young children), as an e-book, an audio version, and on audiocassette. Older first editions and reprints can be found from special booksellers.
Even though Penguin Books bought Frederick Warne & Co. in 1983, the English versions of Potter's books still had the Frederick Warne name in 2010. In 1985, Penguin remade the printing plates using new photos of the original drawings. All 23 books were re-released in 1987 as The Original and Authorized Edition.
Potter's small books have been translated into almost thirty languages, including Greek and Russian. The Tale of Timmy Tiptoes was published in a special reading alphabet in 1966. It was also translated into Dutch in 1968. A Spanish version came out in 1997. In 2009, a German Thesaurus edition was made for students learning English or German. This edition had the English text with translations of difficult words in footnotes. By 1986, the Potter books had become a traditional part of childhood in many countries, both English-speaking and those where the books were translated.
Images for kids
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1st edition cover.
