BUNNY HOP

A hungry bunny has a feast in a picture book that can also function as an early reader.

The titular Bunny is a cute, pink little chunk of a critter, barely more than a rounded rectangle with ears, limbs, and an expressive face rendered in dots and lines. The visual effect is rather porcine, which ends up making sense because this rabbit’s zeal for trying new foods is downright piggish. The spareness of Bunny’s form is matched by the controlled text, which will invite new readers to sound out brief phrases as the “Hungry Bunny” performs a “Bunny hop” through an open kitchen window, upending a grocery bag filled with foods for the taking. Bunny eats through all manner of victuals, with adjectives like sour, bitter, sweet, and sticky describing foods such as beets, strawberries, bubble gum, and pizza, all depicted in the brightly colored illustrations but unnamed in the text. After several more spreads comically showing Bunny trying many other kinds of food and drink, the protagonist’s overindulgence culminates in a closing spread that reads “Bathroom Bunny!” as the gluttonous creature makes a beeline for the toilet.

Silly fun for new readers, with an abundance of adjectives to stretch their decoding skills.