warm fuzzies

Books about rabbits and chicks and springtime are as numerous as, well, rabbits.  But here are some currently causing our noses to twitch in a bunny-like manner:

Marshmallow by Clare Turlay Newberry -- there is something about this Caldecott-award-winning book from 1943 that has me hooked.   Marshmallow is a cute little fluffy white bunny adopted by Miss Tilly, who didn't consult with her tomcat Oliver before bringing the white fluff ball into their cozy apartment.  Funny little poems about rabbits and the obvious parallel of sibling rivalry in furry friend form drive the story with watercolor illustrations in an almost monochromatic scheme that bring an ethereal dimension to the story. Her illustrations have much in common with those of Catherine Rayner's, whose latest book The Bear Who Shared is among those favorites in the present library cache -- even if it's not about rabbits.

Kevin Henkes has authored and illustrated several of our favorite picture books. Little White Rabbit is the latest.  The rabbit imagines himself taking on the characteristics of several things he encounters as he cavorts around the countryside. 

From the Reading Rainbow era we have Rechenka's Eggs by Patricia Polacco.  This is another yearly favorite, about a babushka known throughout the Russian countryside for her hand painted Easter eggs of unmatched beauty.  Every year she takes her eggs to the Easter festival in Moscow to be judged in the competition.  She usually wins.  One year she nurses back to health an injured goose.  The goose, named Rechenka by Babushka, accidentally knocks over the basket of fragile eggshells that Babushka has spent the long cold winter painting in preparation for the festival, shattering them all.  By some miracle, Rechenka lays eggs whose shells are decorated with intricate patterns and beautiful colors.  There are enough for Babushka to enter in the festival.  After Babushka leaves for the Festival, Rechenka leaves one more egg before departing herself.

Along with the two books An Egg is Quiet and A Seed is Sleepy, written by Diana Hutts Aston and illustrated by Silvia Long which I reviewed last summer and such classics as Margaret Wise Brown's The Runaway Bunny, these books of a springtime nature are lately party to some moments of warm fuzzies with my own funny bunnies.