But, First....! Ready Rabbit Gets Ready by Brenna Maloney

"READY RABBIT! IT'S TIME TO GET READY!"

HE KNOWS IT'S TIME TO GET READY...

BUT FIRST HE NEEDS TO BUILD A SPACESHIP.

In Brenna Maloney's newest, Ready Rabbit Gets Ready! (Viking Press, 2015), her little sock rabbit is ready for anything--except the get-ready-for-school routine.

Mama calls upstairs repeatedly with all the usual mother-talk: Get dressed! Pick up your mess! Don't make me come up there! It's almost time for the bus! But there's just so much to do. Ready Rabbit builds a mighty lego spaceship. Then he pulls out his toy bulldozer and pushes all the scattered playthings into a pile to scoop up later.

He pulls on his tightie whities and then gets lost in trying to decide what sort of superhero he wants to be. Where's his cape? Where's his mask? Hey! Wait!

RABBITS DON'T WEAR CLOTHES!

It's hard to eat his cereal when there's a whale in his bowl.

It's hard to brush his teeth when the toothpaste tube happens to squirt all over the floor.

It's hard to find his backpack when his imaginary motorcycle wants to race upstairs. VROOM! VROOM! But at last he's absolutely, totally ready.

"READY RABBIT! DON'T FORGET TO GO POTTY!"

Ready Rabbit's off-page mom must really be ready to see her little rabbit board the school bus at last, dressed for blast-off and a battle with space aliens whenever they appear. Ready Rabbit is ready!

Author Brenna Maloney (a.k.a. The Socks Queen) puts her little gray-striped sock rabbit through his paces in the morning race for the bus stop in a scenario preschool mothers will recognize. Maloney, famous for her Socks Appeal: 16 Fun & Funky Friends Sewn from Socks, and Sock It To Me: Creepy, Crazy & Strangely Appealing 16 Projects Sewn from Socks has created miniature furniture and toys to distract Ready Rabbit from the task at hand, all charmingly photographed by Chuck Kennedy. With just a few hand-drawn features, in his undies or in his aluminum foil astronaut suit, Ready Rabbit is a character ready to be loved by preschoolers who need some prodding to get really ready, too! In an enthusiastic starred review Publishers Weekly says "When Ready Rabbit finally makes it onto the school bus, readers will wish they could follow him to school. Perhaps Maloney will oblige."

Pair this one with Bethanie Murguia's Zoe Gets Ready or Sarah Maize's On My Way to School., for even more procrastinating merriment.