CONEJITO

MacDonald weaves context-translated Spanish and a simple campfire song into this easy-to-learn tale of a young rabbit who outwits three predators with some help from his canny Auntie. Bounding up the mountain to grow, “¡Gordito! ¡Gordito! ¡Gordito!” on Tia Mónica’s cakes and cookies, Little Bunny encounters Señors Zorro, Tigre and León. Putting them off with a promise that he’ll be much fatter coming back down, Conejito eats and dances with Tia Mónica until he’s “healthy and strong and fat as a butterball!”—whereupon Tia Mónica pops him into a barrel and sends him rolling safely home. Valério uses warm colors in the full bleed illustrations, s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g out the ears and tails of his rubbery figures to create a sense of exuberant motion. A lively, and less violent, variation on Betsy Bang’s Bengali version, The Old Woman and the Red Pumpkin (1975), illustrated by Molly Garrett Bang. (source note) (Picture book/folktale. 6-8)