BUNNY AND THE BEAST

A recasting of Beauty and the Beast where the characters are rabbits—and the Beast is a very large dog. The story line is fairly traditional, even to the reasons Beauty—here, Bunny—and her family must move to the country (her father loses and then regains his merchant fleet), and the telling is a bit on the twee side. What is astonishing here are the pictures, voluptuously illustrated like Arcimboldo, Fantin-Latour, and Fragonard rolled into one. The pages are covered in perfectly painted flowers and adornments of every description, gardens, interiors, and hearthsides. Bunny herself and all the other characters are bedizened with silks, velvets, and ornament, and little frog-elves in courtly dress appear to comment by their presence on the action. The emphasis is silly rather than serious, and it is immensely satisfying to peer at the pages to pick out the odd butterfly, bunch of grapes, or other sumptuous element. The doggy Beast does indeed become a rabbit prince, and a tailpiece shows one of the frogs reading the tale to a passel of bunny babies. Of course. (Picture book. 6-9)