Ah!

Originally published in France, Collet’s (All by Myself!) offbeat story traces a white rabbit’s befuddling day as it explores a tunnel, gets bitten by a mosquito, tries to shake off a spider, and falls in love. With ears like TV antennae and the rotund body of a wombat, the rabbit isn’t much of a talker (the text consists mostly of exclamations and sound effects), but he makes up for it with his dramatic antics. Having realized that a tiny blue spider is resting on his head, the rabbit leaps, twirls, and sweats his way across two spreads before collapsing into a nap (at which point the spider climbs right back onto him). Spagnol (Little Benguin) carries the visual comedy into the story’s climactic love sequence, in which the hero woos a similar-looking female rabbit. Their courtship is short-lived—she has a blue spider on her, too, and the rabbits run screaming in opposite directions after they spot them—but the spiders get a happy ending, at least. An amusing, if somewhat thin, adventure for those who like their humor absurd. Ages 2–5. (May)