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Miffy Celebrates Fifty Years

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".

She 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.

The first Miffy book was Miffy at the Seaside.

Miffy's friends include Melanie, Aggie, Boris Bear, Poppy Pig, Grunty, and her dog, Snuffy.

Miffy is drawn in a very minimalist style, requiring only a few lines and one or two primary colours.

The Miffy books each contain sixteen pages of story. Each page has one illustration and four lines of verse.

The books are printed in small format. Dick Bruna says he 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.

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. However, Miffy is a Dutch character. In Bruna's hometown, Utrecht there is now a square named after Nijntje, the Nijntjepleintje (lit: Nijntje Little Square, to retain the rhyme) and in 2006, a little museum opened.

Miffy recently celebrated her fiftieth birthday in 2005. This has been celebrated in cities across the globe, for example in the Manchester Art Gallery in England.

• Official Miffy website (English)
• Official Nijntje website (Dutch)
• Noggin Miffy website Miffy was copyrighted in 1953.
• Hello Kitty was copyrighted by Sanrio in 1974.

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