GOOD NIGHT, LITTLE BUNNY

Soft-focus illustrations in acrylic and colored pencil introduce Little Bunny as he and his young animal friends play at night in the forest. Little Bunny learns that the dark is not something scary but instead presents opportunities to dig in the dirt with Freddie the fox and play in the moonlight with a family of dormice. A friendly owl named Olive reminds Little Bunny that it isn’t really safe for little rabbits to be out alone at night, and she leads him back to his burrow, where his parents are waiting for him. The plodding story is rather old-fashioned and definitely of the forest-fairy-tale subgenre, as predator and prey play together as friends, and the owl warns the bunny and leads him home rather than having him for dinner. The book’s raison d'être is its changing-picture format, used for the cover illustration and for three spreads inside. The circular changing-picture inserts cleverly shift to a new picture by lifting a tree-shaped insert at the right-hand side of the page. Toddlers and younger preschoolers will be fascinated by this quick-change effect within the page, as the bunny and the squirrel transform into a fox, or the bunny and his mother change into the rabbit family asleep in their cozy burrow. Sweet but far from essential. (Picture book. 2-5)