 John Rowe Townsend notes that the book quickly achieved such a high popularity despite the fact that it " came out at a high price and in an unattractive jacket from a publisher who had hardly been heard of . " Fred Inglis , in his book The Promise of Happiness : Value and meaning in children 's fiction , praises the author ’ s use of prose to express the strangeness of ordinary human inventions from the rabbits ' perspective . 
