The Dreaming Game

Throughout "The Dreaming Game" I felt as if I were eavesdropping on a very private conversation rather than reading. The book is a wonderful, compelling love letter to the woman who changed the world of childrens' books forever from her oldest son and is full of personal detail of her mind and heart, foibles and fantasies. Known to most of us as the author and creator of "Pat the Bunny", Dorothy Kunhardt lived a much broader life outside the boundaries of the interactive literature genre she created virtually single-handedly built and created a well-respected name in Lincoln biography and photographic research. Born to an affluent family and married into the scion of an even better-off textile-producing family (soon to fall on hard times) Mrs. Kunhardt was much more than a debutant out to earn her MRS degree, she was a force of nature. After having read the book, I am not sure if she would have considered herself a trail-blazer and yet that is what she was - creating paths where none existed, taking bold risks and hatching crazy schemes to give her husband and children the life she wanted for them and herself the internal life of the mind she craved. Any woman who wondered to herself if she could make a go of some or other interest for both love and money will find a kindred spirit in the pages of Philip Kunhardt's tenderly written and unblinking biography.