Warm at Home

Not just warm, but completely cozy, describes this saga of a baby bunny stuck at home with the sniffles. Bunny greets the news of his confinement with a garden-variety whine--``But there's nothing to do inside''--and proceeds to plow headlong into activity for several hours. After an imaginary game of baseball featuring a turnip (which he later devours), and drawing pictures with homemade beet crayons (which also prove tasty), Bunny takes a short snooze and dreams of--what else?--carrots. Vegetables are so much on this lapin's mind that even his sneezes have an endearing, alliterative property: ``cabbage-cabbage-cabbage- chooo !''; leekity-leekity- chooo !'' An especially endearing tone, in fact, permeates all of Schotter's tale, which along the way celebrates a particularly active imagination and a quietly accepting mother. Goldman's softly colored pencil drawings depict these domestic adventures with a special understanding for preschool perspectives; her use of long-haired lop-eared bunnies makes a nice change from the everyday pink and white bunnies that seem to proliferate in kids' books like, well, like rabbits. From jacket illustration to final scene, a total charmer. Ages 5-8. (Mar.)