CALDECOTT MEDAL WINNER – 2003
Eric Rohmann, author and illustrator
USA: Roaring Brook Press/Millbrook Press, 2002
30 pp
ages 3 +
Interests: animal stories, friendship stories
Mouse admits that wherever his friend Rabbit goes, trouble follows. But he’s still his friend.
Mouse lets his friend Rabbit play with his toy plane, and it gets stuck in a tree. “Don’t worry,” says Rabbit. “I’ve got a plan.” Told mostly in pictures (with only a spare 81 words in the whole book), we are treated to Rabbit’s outrageous scheme, which involves stacking very large animals one on top of another to reach the plane… with some disastrous results.
The illustrations are really winning – bold, hand-colored relief prints done with great humour. The sight of Rabbit dragging, pushing, and carrying in all the animals is hilarious.
What everyone can relate to here is the premise that you can have a troublesome friend – someone who means well though he causes more problems than he solves – but the two of you can still stick by each other, through thick and thin. It’s also a good lesson in sharing toys, as Mouse lets the rather unreliable Rabbit play with his toy airplane. (Or maybe it’s not a good lesson for sharing toys, since everything goes wrong!)
Rarest Kind of Best 
Apr 14, 2011 @ 12:30:53
Ah that is so super cute. And the rabbit reminds me of my pet rabbit (trouble follows where ever she goes, and she tends to hop around my ankles when not eating my books, so trouble also follows me….)