A lighthearted duel between Creativity and the Voice of Reason centers on a pair of lacy red panties blown off a clothesline. Deciding that it's a hat, Rabbit lets an array of agreeable animal friends try it on, even as a repeated demurral (see title) runs in counterpoint along the bottom margin. The unseen nabob of negativity appears at last—a scruffy-looking donkey bearing an album of pictures (of, oddly, men in briefs) for proof. Downcast, Rabbit puts the panties on "properly," but being as there's no hole for a tail, and that all the other animals declare that it looks silly, the garment is soon back on Rabbit's head. In the end, Rabbit even goes a step further, prying up the lower border of the penultimate picture so that the saturated colors of the cartoon-style woodland setting can symbolically flow down into the uncolored region of cold rationality. Pair this all-dialogue outing with Jan Brett's The Hat (1997), in which a more developed story line carries similar play with unconventional headgear. (Picture book. 6-8)Read full book review >
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