LETITIA RABBIT'S STRING SONG

The rabbits in Birch Hollow have their own myth about the coming of spring and their own ritual for celebrating and facilitating its arrival. Unfortunately the whole conception is not only too flimsy to compete with real traditions but far less resonant than other Hoban fantasies. Here the season is personified in fair-haired and shimmering Miss Green who cuts out leaf and flower designs in her studio and sings old Mr. Brumus, the winter artist, to sleep each year; she is aided this time by little Letitia Rabbit who not only plays Miss Green in the annual festival but actually finds the spring songs for her by following a ball of magic string. Mary Chalmers' lovely spring lady, a pointillist vision in green and gold against a frozen wintery backdrop, is true to the tone of the story — but we expect more than shimmery loveliness from Hoban.