Love. Sorrow. Pain. Self-knowlege. Lies. Compassion. Betrayal. Redemption. Reincarnation. Apotheosis. In a children's book, where the principals are toys. Sounds like a manga drawn by Otamu Tezuka, doesn't it? Or perhaps a Pixar sketch for a Toy Story that Disney couldn't countenance. Think again. How about .... Edwardian England/America? The Velveteen Rabbit is one of those so-called "children's classics" that makes utterly no reference, as does Peter Pan, and much of what passes for "children's material" nowadays, to the adult world, but keeps resolutely to its own small universe, that of a middle (or upper) -class boy's home and nursery, at the same time playing with themes that are way beyond the shallow adolescence that passes for 'adult' tropes these days.
Superficially, it's a remake of Pinocchio, a toy who 'becomes real', which is one of the two great robot plots, along with Frankenstein. This was written long before the Disney version, when the only cultural referent was Collodi's somewhat dour novel of sin and redemption: Jiminy Cricket, the chipper little (blackface?) superego, whose initials spell out the referent of the common euphemism, was initially supposed to be the ghost of a cricket that Pin had killed, and The Blue Fairy, a little ghostly girl that somehow manages to age a few years every time she's invoked, yet always remains a virginal moral tutor. In other words, humankind is sinful, only pain can teach, and only by heroic good works that one can truly become worthy of adulthood.
The Velveteen Rabbit is different, in that the hero is not sinful, but ignorant, and a (bit) boastful. He doesn't lie (his only real sin) out of mean-spiritedness, but simply out of trying to fit in to the crowd. As for his good points: he loves. He is created to do so, and that he does. And his fate is to know that that involves far more than simple acceptance, but pain, sorrow, and self-sacrifice. But think of his greater good....
In a season where Christianity is the only good we wish to teach our children, I proffer my feelings....