Surprising

Eric Rohmann's My Friend Rabbit is the tale of a rabbit who means well but "everywhere he goes trouble follows."  This books gentle humor makes it really fun to read to kids.  Eva and Leya loved seeing all of the shennanagins that rabbit gets into.  Rohmann has beautifully illustrated each page with vibrant pictures that are almost cartoon-like which helps add to the fun of the book. 

When I asked Eva what she thought of the book and she said that it was "surprising." Confused I asked why.  She replied, "becuase some pages have words and some don't-that's surprising."   I realized she was right.  This story is told equally through text and picture, so much so that I didn't even realize some pages did not have text.  The two worked so perfectly together that when the text resumed it fit perfectly with the narrative I had created in my head.

The jacket describes these illustrations as, "robust, wonderfully expressive hand-colored relief prints-the perfect vehicle for a simple, heartfelt tale about childhood."  I recently wrote a paper on teaching children to create illustrations that fit the stories they write.  This book is a perfect example of how a style of illustration and the materials used to create that illutration can actually enhance the meaning of the book.

Getting into shennanigans...that's kids stuff.