Pages:  32 pages

Ages:  5 - 8 years

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When Mouse lets his best friend, Rabbit, play with his brand-new airplane, trouble isn't far behind. Of course, Rabbit has a solution -- but when Rabbit sets out to solve a problem, even bigger problems follow.

Every child who's ever had someone slightly bigger or slightly older over to play will recognize this story about toys and trouble and friendship. Eric Rohmann's third picture book is illustrated with robust, wonderfully expressive hand-colored relief prints -- the perfect vehicle for a simple, heartfelt tale about childhood.

Publishers Weekly

My friend Rabbit means well, begins the mouse narrator. But whatever he does, wherever he goes, trouble follows. Once Rabbit pitches Mouse's airplane into a tree, Rohmann tells most of the story through bold, expressive relief prints, a dramatic departure for the illustrator of The Cinder-Eyed Cats and other more painterly works. Rabbit might be a little too impulsive, but he has big ideas and plenty of energy. Rohmann pictures the pint-size, long-eared fellow recruiting an elephant, a rhinoceros and other large animals, and coaching them to stand one on top of another, like living building blocks, in order to retrieve Mouse's plane. Readers must tilt the book vertically to view the climactic spread: a tall, narrow portrait of a stack of very annoyed animals sitting on each other's backs as Rabbit holds Squirrel up toward the stuck airplane. The next spread anticipates trouble, as four duckling onlookers scurry frantically; the following scene shows the living ladder upended, with lots of flying feathers and scrabbling limbs. Somehow, in the tumult, the airplane comes free, and Mouse, aloft again, forgives his friend... even as the closing spread implies more trouble to follow. This gentle lesson in patience and loyalty, balanced on the back of a hilarious set of illustrations, will leave young readers clamoring for repeat readings. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.