Tao Nyeu wowed the children's book world with her debut picture book, Wonder Bear. While the plot in that book may have been a bit too abstract for the picture book crowd to appreciate fully, this trio of stories about a sextet of bunnies is pitch-perfect for the preschool set. From first page to last, everything about this intimate volume coheres; each selection showcases a limited palette and an assured bold outline that recall Dorothy Kunhardt. As the first tale, "Muddy Bunnies," opens, six sugar-white rabbits are "soaking up the sun" and communing with a frog on a patchwork landscape of carrot-orange and cornflower-blue rolling hills. Eagle-eye youngsters will note a mass of brown blobs that dot the road where Mr. Goat travels on his tractor. "Splash" goes the tractor. "What a mess!" reads the text above a now brown-and-white group of bunnies. "They need some help from Bear." Bear, as white as the bunnies, washes them in the "delicate cycle"; a full-bleed spread shows glimpses of cotton tails, ear tips and hind paws as the washer goes "swish swash." Then Bear hangs them on the clothesline to dry. Nyeu knows that preschoolers endow their stuffed animals with human traits, and she competently blends the real and imaginary.
In the second story, "Dusty Bunnies," the carrot-orange, lime-green and sepia-brown palette declare the autumn season as Mrs. Goat vacuums up the leaves that fall in her yard. When she accidentally vacuums up the six bunnies, "dozing deep underground," once again it's Bear to the rescue ("This looks like a job for the big fan"). Bear's gender is never identified: Bear knits and also knows how to repair Mrs. Goat's vacuum cleaner (and likely comes up with the brilliant and humorous solution for ensuring the bunnies' future safety from the vacuum's suction, too). A bird follows the bunnies through nearly every scene here, just as a frog did in the first story. It's a butterfly that figures prominently in the final selection, "Bunny Tails." While Mr. Goat watches the butterfly as he trims some hedges, he inadvertently clips a couple of tails off of the bunnies. (Bear's sewing machine does the magic this time.) In every picture, youngsters can find all six bunnies (sometimes only a cottontail is visible); the last spread depicts all of the characters (including frog, bird and butterfly) sharing tea and cake, alongside the tractor, vacuum cleaner and sewing machine. All three stories end with the line, "Everyone is happy." Youngest book lovers will be, too, and they'll beg for these bunny tales time and again.--Jennifer M. Brown