cover image Bunny Lune

Bunny Lune

Kae Nishimura, . . Clarion, $15 (32pp) ISBN 978-0-618-71606-7

Westerners may see a man in the moon, but Japanese tradition holds that the contoured surface depicts a rabbit making rice cakes. In fact, there's even a Japanese full moon celebration, complete with moon songs. When the eponymous rabbit narrator of Nishimura's (I Am Dodo ) story finds out about these Japanese folkways from his pen pal Pyonko, he promptly decides that the moon is the place to be, and tries to figure out how to get there. He takes a comically grueling job at a local salad bar that requires him to wear a carrot costume (“I'd have to work 20 million more days—54,794 years—to pay for my moon tour,” he calculates after a particularly bad day. “I quit the job”) and practices holding his breath in preparation for the moon's airless atmosphere. Just when he's willing to finally admit that he'll never walk in Neil Armstrong's footsteps, an eccentric old man who claims to be Mayor of the Moon tells him, “You don't need a rocket or spaceship. All you have to do is look up at the moon and imagine yourself there.” Done and done: “That night, I visited the moon,” Bunny Lune says in the blissful final spread. The text is undistinguished; it feels overlong, and the final message is pat. However, Nishimura's softly hued ink and watercolor drawings demonstrate a sharp sense of humor, and turn Bunny Lune into a winning figure—a cotton-tailed Don Quixote. Ages 4-7. (Aug.)