How Hard Can It Be? Dog and Rabbit by Barney Saltzberg

Dog didn't mind being alone. But...

...Sometimes Dog was lonely.

But sometimes a friend is nowhere to be seen. Dog's standards are not too high. He just wants a friend around.

"How hard can it be..." he wondered.

There's Rabbit, looking lonely, too, wishing for a friend.

Someone to hop with.

But it's hard to find a friend.

 Not everyone hops to the same rhythm.

Dog is not so picky. He fixes on Rabbit as a potential friend and puts a bunny figure up on the front of his fridge, and when Rabbit spots that bunny through the window, he comes back often to gaze longingly at it. He smiles at it. Dog smiles at Rabbit, but Rabbit hops swiftly away.

Things seem to be at an impasse... but then ... one day Rabbit finds Dog's door open.

Rabbit hops inside to meet the bunny, but sadly he sees it is not a real rabbit. Suddenly, Rabbit sees Dog, quietly there, smiling.

The one who had waited.

It's a case of looking for a friend in all the wrong places, in Barney Saltzberg's little parable of friendship found, Dog and Rabbit (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2019). As artist and storyteller, Saltzberg' work is simplicity itself. His art is done with small details, simple black line drawings and a few muted colors; each one of the characters is minimalist, but with a certain solidity. Dog is brown, with a big nose and medium-droopy ears; Rabbit is gray, pear-shaped, with evocative ears that never quite stand straight up, and both have simple dots for eyes and body language that allows readers to interpret all for themselves. Saltzman's text is equally spare, without modifiers.

Saltzman's theme appears equally modest, unexplicated, leaving it to the reader to explore the possibilities. Are Rabbit's expectations pie in the sky (the rabbit on the moon, as in some folklore)? Is Dog simply settling? Or does he simply see beyond superficial differences? What is it that makes certain unlikely friendships happen? Like many well-written children's stories, there are layers of meaning here, embedded within, that require perception beyond a quick read-through.