The Other Rabbit

If someone asked David Lynch to create a story based on the game Memory, the result might be something like this picture book from the Dutch team of Rinck and van der Linden, who previously collaborated on I Feel a Foot! (2008). It opens with a Memory-esque scattering of blue squares: “Rabbit is looking for the other rabbit.” Instead he finds a red airplane and sets off to find his pair. “Where’s the other rabbit?” he asks a flock of blue birds that look like they’re on their way to becoming an Escher pattern. They don’t know, and after Rabbit’s plane crashes on an island, he meets a king, a red chicken, herds of animals, and a dragon, all of whom have their own identical matches. From one page to the next, there’s almost no telling what’s about to happen, and the somewhat opaque language doesn’t exactly help (“The fish carry [Rabbit] some of the way. Until they find some other fish and all the fish swim off together”). All in all, it’s more doppelganger creepy than twin cute. Ages 3–6. (Oct.)