Reviews for My Friend Rabbit

by Eric Rohmann

Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Best known for fluid, superbly realistic oil paintings, Rohmann (Prairie Train, 1999, etc) switches to thick-lined colored woodcuts and a simpler pictorial style for this nearly wordless, engagingly wacky episode. After carelessly throwing little Mouse's airplane up into a tree, Rabbit finds a unique way to reach it. ("Not to worry, Mouse. I've got an idea!") Industrious, if not too practical, he drags in a reluctant bear, a crocodile, a purple hippo, and other animals, then stacks them atop a wobbly-legged elephant. Great is the inevitable fall thereof, but Mouse and airplane are reunited, and Mouse, being a true friend, swoops down to rescue Rabbit from the now-annoyed menagerie. Rohmann uses wordless, and sometimes even empty, frames to great comic effect, allowing huge animals to make sudden entrances from the side-or from above, and artfully capturing the expressions on their faces. Young readers and pre-readers will chortle at the silliness of it all while enjoying the sometimes-demanding friendship between these disparately sized chums. (Picture book. 4-7)


Horn Book
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

When narrator Mouse?s well-meaning but trouble-prone friend Rabbit gets Mouse?s airplane stuck in a tree, his solution (a precarious tower of reluctant animals that almost reaches the airplane) causes even more problems. The book is visually exciting--Rohmann?s hand-colored relief prints make fresh and innovative use of picture book space--and broadly humorous. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.

Back