It's Miffy's birthday; she's more than half a century old and has millions of admirers across the globe. Miffy's adventures have been translated into 40 languages. Her name in Dutch is Nijntje, which sounds like the way a small child would pronounce konijntje, or little rabbit.

Dick Bruna did his first drawing of Miffy in 1955 when his one-year-old son saw a rabbit hopping around in the dunes while on holiday in Egmond on Sea. Miffy has been stealing into the hearts and affections of children across the world ever since.

The stories are familiar to the children; Miffy has a teddy bear, she plays in the park, goes to school and visits her friends. She also has more difficult experiences; her grandmother dies and she has to go into hospital.

Simple
The illustrations seem quite simple at first glance; her eyes are black dots, she has floppy ears and her mouth is a cross but the style is very artistic and Bruna was inspired by Dutch artist Gerrit Rietveld. He does all the illustrations with a paintbrush and writes the stories as well. The second and fourth lines rhyme. He carefully monitors the translations to make sure they are correct.

This is Miffy's house

It's not much bigger than a shed

But it's very snug and cosy

And the shutters are bright red

Miffy's own little square
A square in Bruna's hometown of Utrecht is named after Miffy and has a statue of her in the middle (in keeping with Bruna's style, it's called Nijntjepleintje, literally Little Nijntje Square), and Utrecht's Centraal Museum opened the Dick Bruna House, a permanent gallery exhibiting his work, in 2006.

There have been three musicals about Miffy as well as a cartoon series on television. Young and old can celebrate Miffy's birthday at the Dick Bruna House.