BR’ER RABBIT CAPTURED!

Hoping to add Br’er Rabbit’s to the suite of familiar folk-tale character portraits exhibited in The Mysterious Collection of Dr. David Harleyson (2004), the porcine painter sets out for rural Sandy Creek. As related in a series of letters home, the visitors get a warm country welcome from Br’er Fox, Br’er Bear and other local residents, who, in exchange for portraits of their own, trot out good-humored renditions of the Tar Baby story and other well-known instances of the elusive lagomorph’s trickery. Cassels interleaves smaller scenes of each encounter with the handsomely finished, full-page formal sittings—depicting Br’er Fox, for instance, with a stained tome entitled What to Do with Tar, Br’er Wolf in a natty grey suit and, at last, a prosperous-looking Br’er Rabbit sitting comfortably on his porch. Yet another capture and escape later, all gather (more or less) convivially for a group showing. Closing with a recipe for blackberry pie and an appreciation of Joel Chandler Harris’s tales (though not specific source notes), this makes an amiable introduction to Van Dyke Parks’s Jump! (1986), illustrated by Barry Moser, Julius Lester’s Tales of Uncle Remus (1987), illustrated by Jerry Pinkney and their sequels. (Picture book/folktales. 7-9)