Arbitrary and lacking closure, this is more like a real dream than a sleepy-time tale.
Rabbits have group dreams—very peculiar ones.
At first, this animal tale appears fairly traditional: bunnies hop around a flowery field among bees and butterflies, hunkering down to eat carrots, radishes, and lettuce. “What do bunnies know?” They know to run from the farmer’s dog “even if he only wants to play,” and here things begin to feel uncanny. The enormous dog resembles the bunnies more than it does any canine, possessing tiny feet but virtually no legs, which highlights the fact that these bunnies, too, lack legs for their wee feet. They flee the friendly dog like a synchronized fleeing team, all in the same position, seeming to skim above the ground, which is solid white background. Diving into burrows, they again glide through air without touching soil. A chicken inexplicably joins them. When they sleep, their group dreams involve bees, butterflies, and a large dog—understandably—but also ABCs, 123s, and school supplies, which seem to arise from nowhere. A section about writing their names, with one bunny denying that his name is Bobby (who said it was?), is as peculiar as real dreams. McCarty shades his animals with smooth, fine lines, and their round eyes are almost electric. However, figures seem static even when moving, and the general lack of groundedness and gravity is more surreal than satisfying.
Arbitrary and lacking closure, this is more like a real dream than a sleepy-time tale. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8050-9687-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories.
Kids know vegetables can be scary, but rarely are edible roots out to get someone. In this whimsical mock-horror tale, carrots nearly frighten the whiskers off Jasper Rabbit, an interloper at Crackenhopper Field.
Jasper loves carrots, especially those “free for the taking.” He pulls some in the morning, yanks out a few in the afternoon, and comes again at night to rip out more. Reynolds builds delicious suspense with succinct language that allows understatements to be fully exploited in Brown’s hilarious illustrations. The cartoon pictures, executed in pencil and then digitally colored, are in various shades of gray and serve as a perfectly gloomy backdrop for the vegetables’ eerie orange on each page. “Jasper couldn’t get enough carrots … / … until they started following him.” The plot intensifies as Jasper not only begins to hear the veggies nearby, but also begins to see them everywhere. Initially, young readers will wonder if this is all a product of Jasper’s imagination. Was it a few snarling carrots or just some bathing items peeking out from behind the shower curtain? The ending truly satisfies both readers and the book’s characters alike. And a lesson on greed goes down like honey instead of a forkful of spinach.
Serve this superbly designed title to all who relish slightly scary stories. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4424-0297-3
Page Count: 40
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2012
Chilling in the best ways.
When a young rabbit who’s struggling in school finds a helpful crayon, everything is suddenly perfect—until it isn’t.
Jasper is flunking everything except art and is desperate for help when he finds the crayon. “Purple. Pointy…perfect”—and alive. When Jasper watches TV instead of studying, he misspells every word on his spelling test, but the crayon seems to know the answers, and when he uses the crayon to write, he can spell them all. When he faces a math quiz after skipping his homework, the crayon aces it for him. Jasper is only a little creeped out until the crayon changes his art—the one area where Jasper excels—into something better. As guilt-ridden Jasper receives accolade after accolade for grades and work that aren’t his, the crayon becomes more and more possessive of Jasper’s attention and affection, and it is only when Jasper cannot take it anymore that he discovers just what he’s gotten himself into. Reynolds’ text might as well be a Rod Serling monologue for its perfectly paced foreboding and unsettling tension, both gentled by lightly ominous humor. Brown goes all in to match with a grayscale palette for everything but the purple crayon—a callback to black-and-white sci-fi thrillers as much as a visual cue for nascent horror readers. (This book was reviewed digitally.)
Chilling in the best ways. (Picture book. 4-7)Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5344-6588-6
Page Count: 48
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2022
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