Mrs. Newberry, the author-artist of April's Kittens and Mittens, has of course owned many cats. But until Marshmallow came to live in her two-room Chelsea apartment, she had never known a rabbit. Neither had Oliver, her personal cat, a large, serious-minded tabby who had led the sheltered life of a Manhattan apartment cat and therefore did not know that the world was full of other animals. What would happen when he met a live bunny? Could they ever possibly become friends?

What actually happened was so interesting that Mrs. Newberry discarded the story she had originally planned and instead decided to tell the true story of how Oliver and Marshmallow became friends. She herself is thinly disguised in the book as Miss Tilley, Oliver's housekeeper, who had been with him since kittenhood, and whose main duty in life (Oliver assumed) was to prepare and serve his meals.

Everyone who has seen the original sketches of Oliver and Marshmallow together has asked the same question: "Did they really act like that?" The answer is that they really did. Every incident in the story is true, and all the illustrations have been done from life studies of the two animals. (Even the toy bunny which puzzled Marshmallow is real.)

At the back there is a duplicate of one of the loveliest pictures in the book. It is tipped in so that it can be removed for framing without injury to the book itself.

From the dust jacket of a 1942 edition