Character Analysis
Sorry, Pixar, but this little teddy bear cornered the market on the "sentient toy" genre way before Woody and Buzz made it mainstream.
Instead of a sleek spacesuit or a snazzy sheriff costume designed for prime merch sales, Corduroy sports a pair of simple green overalls fastened with white buttons—or at least they're supposed to be. His quest for his missing buttons sets off the action in the story.
Since the book is only twenty-eight pages long and most of those pages only have a sentence or two on them, Freeman doesn't have a whole lot of room for character development, but here's what we do know about Corduroy: he's one brave little bear.
Maybe he wasn't always that way—at the beginning of the story, he's content to just sit sadly on his shelf and wait for somebody else to rescue him. However, as soon as he concludes that the only thing standing between him and his dreams is his missing button, he decides to venture out off the shelf and find it.
It seems to be the first time Corduroy has ever walked around the department store at night since he is surprised by several strange new things throughout the story. Rather than being scared, brave little Corduroy reacts with curiosity.
For instance, it'd be totally understandable if he were slightly freaked out by the moving floor of the escalator, but he just assumes he's climbing a mountain and rolls with it.
"Could this be a mountain?" he wondered. "I think I've always wanted to climb a mountain." (8-9)
(Why he understands the concept of a mountain but not an escalator—despite spending his entire furry existence with an escalator in sight—we do not know.)
Though Corduroy's button search is ultimately unsuccessful, he doesn't languish on the toy shelf much longer; Lisa "adopts" him the following day. Through his plush protagonist, Freeman teaches kids how to handle unfamiliar situations. Things may not always go according to plan, but with enough bravery and hope, they usually work out in the end.