My Little Rabbit Tale

With its chipper text running sideways up the left page, across the top of each spread, down the right page and across the bottom (but not upside-down!)--and framing bountiful panels of winsome art--this large-format book is busy indeed. Appropriately so, since the diminutive rabbit whose day Porter chronicles is also busy, to say the very least. From the moment he climbs out of his crib and wakes his parents (``Not yet!'' cries Mommy Rabbit as her son opens her eyelid with his paw and sprinkles juice on his father's head), Little Rabbit is up to his ears in mischief. He wreaks holy havoc on the breakfast table, steals the doctor's stethoscope during an office visit, makes a frightful mess at the grocery store and continues to play long after his father nods off in his efforts to get his son to sleep. Filled with cunning particulars, Porter's pictures tell much of her story, which will enable preschoolers to ``read'' between the lines. Ages 2-6. (Mar.)