GRACIE MEETS A GHOST

A bespectacled bunny loses her glasses in this Japanese import, the first of a series about the character to be translated into English.

Gracie is a white bunny who needs glasses. Even though her friends tease her, she’s proud of them. One day, however, while playing on the mountain, she loses them—which she doesn’t realize until bedtime. She makes her way up the darkened path to retrieve them, mistaking the glowing eyes of an owl for the lenses and the curly tail of the mouse for an earpiece before going on. When a ghost (depicted as a very un-scary, large, white teardrop shape) tries to scare her, she doesn’t recognize him as a ghost. Hoping he’ll scare her with her glasses on, he searches all night for them for her, only to disappear as soon as he finds them, as the sun comes up right then; Gracie is never the wiser. Readers with eyes like Gracie’s will be mystified that she did not notice when her glasses fell off and that she thinks she can possibly find them on her own in the dark. Her indelible good cheer, however, is appealing, and her Mr. Magoo–like mistakes are gently amusing. Sena’s textured collage illustrations employ torn paper to evoke Gracie’s fur; the simplicity of the compositions gears the book to younger readers.

Gracie’s a sweet little bunny; here’s hoping her next visit has a bit more internal logic.