My Friend Rabbit: A Picture Book [Paperback]

Rabbit saves the day in a most ingeneous way.

When Mouse lets his best friend, Rabbit, play with his brand-new airplane, trouble isn't far behind. From Caldecott Honor award winner Eric Rohmann comes a brand-new picture book about friends and toys and trouble, illustrated in robust, expressive prints.

My Friend Rabbitis the winner of the 2003 Caldecott Medal.

Eric Rohmannwon the Caldecott Medal forMy Friend Rabbit, a Caldecott Honor for TimeFlies, and a Robert F. Silbert Honor forGiant Squid. He is also the author and illustrator ofBone Dog, A Kitten Tale, andThe Cinder-Eyed Cats, among other books for children. He has illustrated many other books, includingLast Song, based on a poem by James Guthrie, and has created book jackets for a number of novels, includingHis Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman.My Friend Rabbitis the winner of the 2003 Caldecott Medal.

My friend Rabbit means well, begins the mouse narrator. But whatever he does, wherever he goes, trouble follows. Once Rabbit pitches Mouse's airplane into a tree, Rohmann tells most of the story through bold, expressive relief prints, a dramatic departure for the illustrator of The Cinder-Eyed Cats and other more painterly works. Rabbit might be a little too impulsive, but he has big ideas and plenty of energy. Rohmann pictures the pint-size, long-eared fellow recruiting an elephant, a rhinoceros and other large animals, and coaching them to stand one on top of another, like living building blocks, in order to retrieve Mouse's plane. Readers must tilt the book vertically to view the climactic spread: a tall, narrow portrait of a stack of very annoyed animals sitting on each other's backs as Rabbit holds Squirrel up toward the stuck airplane. The next spread anticipates trouble, as four duckling onlookers scurry frantically; the following scene shows the living ladder upended, with lots of flying feathers and scrabbling limblƒ5