A neighborhood races to bring four dumped domesticated bunnies to safety in the keen and courageous middle-grade nonfiction work The Wild Season by Stonewall Book Award winner Dashka Slater (The 57 Bus), in which the heroes are those who pay careful attention.
"One night in June 2023, someone approached a small park in San Francisco carrying bunnies." This person, "the Bunny Dumper," abandoned all four rabbits in Golden Gate Heights Park, a space that serves as a "communal backyard" for the houses along its border. The animals, accustomed to being fed by humans and nowhere near as afraid as "a wild rabbit needs to be," were unsuited for park life. The community--including children and adults--assembled a team to find and trap the bunnies before they could be eaten by predators or overrun the park. The "bunny search party" fought thorn bushes and public misconceptions (including the notion that the bunnies would be happier in the park) as they learned "to think like rabbits."
Slater uses a congenial, friendly tone and gives multilayered, textured context. She focuses one chapter on the domestication of dogs and includes passages addressing the evolution of hunting. She also describes the history of the park, depicting it as a little magical, a place that blurs the urban and wild, the mysterious and known. Realistic black-and-white illustrations by Jamey Christoph (Bones in the White House) root readers in the concrete world of the park and add an ethereal touch. The Wild Season is as inspiring as it is sincere. --Ari Mackoff, bookseller