BILBY

Kangaroos and koalas may steal the limelight, but they aren’t the only marsupials in town—or the Outback.

The omnivorous bilby is ratlike but both endangered and cute enough to, as the author notes, be catching on as chocolate alternatives to Easter bunnies in Australia. Here, they “canter” through painted nighttime desert scenes rendered in short-stroked brush work and scribbly orange lines. In passages of fictionalized narrative paired to factual commentary in another typeface, Wignell follows mother Bilby as she crawls down into her spiral burrow to give birth, then traces the growth and development of Young Bilby as he ventures out of the pouch to find food and to survive owls and other predators long enough to reach solitary adulthood. Though overall the story has a generic cast into which any small, furry creature could be plugged, the main subject, setting and at least some of the wild supporting cast are specific to Down Under. Also, the information about life cycle, senses, behavior and other natural detail is backed up by a rudimentary topical index.

Bland and purposeful, but a close-up view of an animal likely to be new to readers in this hemisphere.