RABBITS ON MARS

Weary of hostile dogs, dangerous highways, and a general lack of carrots, three bunnies blast off for Mars aboard a homemade rocket, hoping for a better life. It looks at first as if they’ve made the right choice since soon after landing, they come upon an unattended pile of enormous, delicious carrots, and the local dogs, far from being unfriendly, are eager to play. It’s a rough kind of play, however, and at last even the carrot diet begins to pall—so the rabbits distract their canine playmates by teaching them to jitterbug, then sneak off to their rocket for the bumpy but welcome ride back to Earth’s comfortably familiar environs. Schamber makes a colorful debut here, combining “Roger Rabbit”–like cartoon animals with digitally manipulated photographs into big, splashy swirls of action. Young armchair space travelers may miss the explosive enthusiasm of Dan Yaccarino’s Zoom! Zoom! Zoom! I’m Off to the Moon! (1997) or the outright silliness of Arthur Yorinks Quack (p. 68), but the journey is still worth making, particularly as it ends with both a safe return and one rabbit, at least, whose curiosity about other worlds remains undimmed. (Picture book. 6-8)