The Little Gray Bunny

The Little Red Hen folktale gets an Easter makeover in this story of a rabbit whose friends aren’t interested in helping collect, boil, decorate, and hide Easter eggs. McGrath (who offered a different holiday twist on this story in The Little Red Elf) deviates from the traditional repeated “Not I” responses, as the lamb, turtle, and duck snarkily refuse the rabbit’s attempts to engage them (“Do you even know me?” says the duck, lounging in its bathtub). Kim’s (Earth Day, Birthday!) T-shirt-wearing, turnip-headed hero exudes a sense of both earnestness and mischief, the latter surfacing in the wry “treats” he gives his not-so-helpful friends in the end—a trio of hyperactive, newly-hatched little red hens. Ages 3–6. (Feb.)