SONNY SAYS MINE!

A kid finds a toy, becomes smitten with it, and lies about having it.

Sonny’s an orange fox who stands upright and wears a shirt and knit cap. At the playground, Sonny finds a pink toy bunny in a yellow polka-dot dress. “Ooh!” he says, naming it Bun-Bun and playing with it. When a yellow rabbit named Boo in a black-and-red dress arrives in search of “her favorite pink bunny,” the arc turns to deception. Sonny hides the toy and explicitly lies to try to keep it. After prolonged dishonesty and some weird, insistent narration—“Will Sonny do the right thing? Will he? Will he?”—he does. As a lesson, this might serve; as literature, it’s direct and dull. Mildly intriguing is the character Meemo, inhabiting a gray area between pet dog and anthropomorphized animal like Sonny and Boo. On one hand, Meemo sniffs Bun-Bun, can’t speak words, and barks “WOOF!” On the other hand, the creature is the story’s moral center, glowering at Sonny’s deception—standing upright with hands on hips—and urging him to do right. Illustrations feature bold black lines and flat colors in flat spaces; short black dashes depicting the characters’ fur are sharp, unblended, and visually dominant such that everyone appears stubbly.

Valuable only as the most explicit moral lesson.