KNUFFLE BUNNY TOO

Trixie knows that she will wow all the kids at Pre-K with her “one-of-a-kind” toy, but she doesn’t reckon on Sonja, who arrives with her own Knuffle Bunny—and the morning does “not go well.”

The two bunnies are confiscated and returned at the end of the day, but neither girl notices that they’ve been swapped, until the wee hours of the morning. Willems revisits his black-and-white Brooklyn, his now-signature cartoon characters superimposed on the photographs. This technique here yields some spectacular results: The middle-of-the-night hostage exchange features a glorious image of the Manhattan skyline, the teeny figures of Trixie and her daddy and Sonja and her daddy approaching from opposite sides of Grand Army Plaza. His mastery of pacing is evident in every panel and page turn, the understated text punctuating the illustrations perfectly, and his use of the conventions of cartooning add to the hilarity.

Too often, sequels come off as obviously calculated attempts to cash in on success; this offering, with its technical brilliance and its total and sympathetic understanding of the psychology of the preschooler, stands as magnificent in its own right.