What sets The Rabbit Listened apart is its universality. Come With Me by Holly McGhee, Breaking News by Sarah Lynne Reul, and Something Happened In Our Town by Marianne Celano all seek to comfort and guide in hard times. One of the big trends of this and last year are picture books that tackle bad things happening in the wider world. And when, after Taylor has talked, and screamed, and laughed, and gone through every step of the process, only then does Taylor think about rebuilding once again. Only the rabbit, quiet and close, stays with Taylor and listens. Yet as Taylor rejects their advice they leave, and the kid is alone again. One by one, animals notice the child’s misery and try to help. Who wouldn’t have been proud? And who could have predicted the flock of blackbirds that swooped out of the sky, knocking it all down? Suddenly left with nothing, Taylor is devastated.
Taylor had worked very hard, building the blocks into just the right configuration. A book that makes me grateful to think that adults reading this book to small children will pick up on some of what it’s laying down.įor a second there, it was a most magnificent thing. My latest favorite? The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld. The best make it look effortless and easy. It is far more interesting to look at books that integrate their message seamlessly within their stories. Anyone can write a book that crams its morals down the throats of its young readers. I call these kinds of books “Message Books” and each year I collect the names of the ones that do their jobs well. As it turns out, children are not the only ones in need of instruction these days. I doubt very much that old Benjamin Harris could have foreseen the rise of the graduation gift picture book or the books kept in a psychiatrist’s office for the aid of his or her adult patients. These days, it's funny to think that picture books do not solely instruct just the young anymore. And because books like Little Goody Two-Shoes lie at the root of everything published in our day and age, we aren’t surprised by picture books that seek to instruct.
Morally uplifting texts that will mold the little readers into fine, upstanding citizens. That is, in fact, the very backbone of the book business for youth today. Lest we forget, the only reason that children’s books were invented in the first place was to teach small human lessons.
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