Miffy is a small female rabbit in a series of picture books drawn and written by Dutch artist Dick Bruna. The original Dutch name, Nijntje, is a shortening of the diminutive konijntje, "little rabbit".
The first Miffy book was produced in 1955, and almost 30 others have followed. In total they have sold over 85 million copies, and led to two separate television series as well as items such as clothes and toys featuring the character. A feature-length film, Miffy the Movie, was released on 30 January 2013.
Two television series based on the character have been produced: Miffy and Friends, which ran from 2003 until 2007, and Miffy's Adventures Big and Small, which premiered 3rd October 2016 on Nick Jr. in the United States.
Miffy was created in 1955 after 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 female after Bruna decided that he wanted to draw a dress and not trousers on his rabbit. Depending on the story, Miffy can range in age from being a baby to being four years old.
At first Miffy looked like a toy animal with floppy ears but by 1963, she looked the way we see her today a stylized form of a rabbit. Miffy is drawn in a graphic style, with minimalist black graphic lines. Bruna chooses to only use black, white, the primary colours (red, yellow and blue), green and orange. It is his use of primarily primary colours that makes Miffy instantly recognisable, and also popular with preschoolers, because of her bright and intense simplistic colours.
There are now almost 32 Miffy titles and many more for the other characters. Bruna has produced a total of 124 picture books for children. The Miffy books each contain twelve 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.
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