I LOVE MY LITTLE STORYBOOK

Sure to warm the auricles of newly independent readers (and older reading advocates) everywhere, this rhapsody features a brown-and-white bunny only a little bigger than its beloved storybook. Not only is it satisfying as an object (“It shades me on a sunny day. I love to make its pages flick . . . ”), but as a gateway to “a magic forest” filled with “special friends,” from a giant and a sleeping princess to rabbit-eared fairies and other magical creatures. Well-populated with toadstools and unicorns, ferns and flying mice, the forest really does have a magical look in Jeram’s (Kiss Good Night, 2001, etc.) pale, idyllic watercolors. Though parents will be eager to share this with their own little bunnies, it’s really a celebration of the joys of going one-on-one with a volume, of choosing where and how to read it, and when to stop. Understandably, though, “I love it from the beginning / all the way / right through to . . . the end.” (Picture book. 4-6)