PETER COTTONTAIL is the temporary name that Peter Rabbit gave himself in the first book written by Thornton Burgess, “Old Mother West Wind..” In the story, Peter Rabbit thought the name Peter Cottontail made him sound more important. The author, Thornton Burgess, was an American conservationist and author of children’s stories. He loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them in his books and newspaper column, “Bedtime Stories.” By the time he retired (in 1960), he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for his daily newspaper column. In hi
