Pat the Bunny is a "touch and feel" book for small children and babies that has been a perennial best-seller in the U.S. since published in 1940. It is hardly a book in the literary sense, but more a collection of things to do, such as pat the fake fur of a rabbit on one page, feel a bit of sandpaper that stands for "daddy's beard" on another, and look in a mirror on yet another. A bestseller is a book that is identified as extremely popular by its inclusion on a list of top-sellers. ...

It was written by Dorothy Kunhardt, who was a successful children's author when she wrote Pat the Bunny for her 3-year-old daughter, Edith. It was partly an experiment in using interactive elements in a book, which was unusual at the time. In the scientific method, an experiment is a set of actions and observations, performed to support or falsify a hypothesis or research concerning phenomena. ... There are several conceptual views of interactivity, the most general being the contingency view. ...

Edith Kunhardt wrote several sequels in the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years the publisher, Random House, has developed an entire line of related products. Random House is a publishing division of the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which acquired it in 1998. ...