The Hoarder! Too Many Carrots by Katy Hudson

RABBIT LOVED CARROTS!

RABBIT WAS PROUD OF HIS COLLECTION AND BURROWED THEM AWAY IN HIS COZY HOLE.

BUT RABBIT HAD A PROBLEM. A BIG PROBLEM.

A rabbit's gotta right to crave carrots.

But there can be too much of a good thing, and Rabbit's collection has reached critical mass!

His burrow has so many carrots that he has to burrow into his burrow through the veggies. And trying to sleep surrounded, top, bottom, and on both sides by pointy root vegetables? Fahgeddaboudit.

Carrots are falling out of his mail slot, and his roof is bulging through with carrots and more carrots.

"I NEED A PLACE TO SLEEP!" RABBIT TOLD TORTOISE.

Tortoise offers to share his house, but, problem is, his shell is his house!

Rabbit gives it the old college try, squeezing and wiggling his way inside Tortoise's snug shell. But the fit is so tight that the two-headed tortoise shell tumbles out of control.

Tortoise's attempt to crash with Torty sends them rolling downhill and then...CRASH! into a rock.

Rabbit tries out Bird's nest, but when he tries to nest along with his carrots...CRACK! goes Bird's branch.

When the bough breaks, down comes Bird's nest, carrots and all!

Squirrel takes pity on his rodent cousin and invites Rabbit and the rest of the now homeless friends to bring their bedrolls for a sleepover in his commodious hollow tree. But soon the overstuffed trunk splits, cracks, and crashes, and the four footloose friends are forced to split the scene posthaste. Beaver offers his stick-built waterfront home beside the pond, but a flash flood floats them all away, carrots and all.

Beaver, Squirrel, Bird, Tortoise AND Rabbit are all washed up, embedded in a mud bank. Is it time for Rabbit to reconsider the merits of carrot collecting?

Which brings up a new problem. What to do with too many carrots? Where's Bugs Bunny when you need him?

There is one way, and Katy Hudson's newest, Too Many Carrots (Capstone Young Readers, 2016), ends with a jolly potluck supper, with Rabbit providing all the carrot cake, carrot casserole, carrot juice, and carrot soup that the gang can gobble.

And then all the buddies bunk down in the only house left standing--and plenty roomy--Rabbit's Burrow!

It seems Rabbit now has too many roomies--but that's a story for another day!

Katy Hudson's clever narrative turns upside down the old premise of "there's always room for one more," in a funny story of true friends adorned with rambunctiously detailed pen-and-ink (with plenty of orange paint) illustrations in a wry and witty look at the downside of too much of a good thing.

This rabbit tale begs to be paired up with Aaron Reynolds' Caldecott Honor Book, Creepy Carrots! (Read my review here).

Talk-Back! You're Finally Here! by Melanie Watt

YOU'RE FINALLY HERE!

BUT WHERE WERE YOU? DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG I'VE BEEN WAITING?

It's a bit disconcerting to open a book about a bunny and be berated by an in-your-face character for tardiness in opening his book. This bunny has definitely internalized the message to be assertive.

The lecture continues. It's rude to make people wait so long. Blah-blah-blah. Don't you get how boring it is to sit immobile on a page waiting for some action? The bunny's Bored-O-Meter has gone from "Bored" to "Bored Up To My Ears" already! It's as annoying as an itchy sweater...Yadda-yadda-yadda! The page focus dollies into a closeup of nothing but the bunny's glaring eyes and beetled brows.

STAY!

And to seal the deal the bunny whips out a contract which states

YOU, THE READER, HEREBY AGREES TO STAY WITH ME, THE BUNNY (THE BOOK CHARACTER WITH WHICH YOU'RE FAMILIAR).

Just as the Bunny thinks he's reeled in a reader for life, his cell phone rings. With a breezy "Hold that thought" to the waiting reader, he throws himself into yakking with an old friend.

As the reader beats a hasty retreat, the clueless bunny suddenly notices the departure.

WAS IT SOMETHING I SAID?

Melanie Watts' latest, You're Finally Here! (Hyperion, 2011) joins Mo Willems' delightful recent We Are in a Book! (An Elephant and Piggie Book) and Jef Czeka's witty Cat Secrets in the book-about-a-book genre. Whereas Willems' childlike characters are thrilled to find a reader looking back at them and Czeka's character has an appropriately cautious cat-itude of his own, Watts' full-of-himself brazen bunny gives the reader an earful of the trials and tribulations of a character just waiting for the tardy reader. It's a different point of view for the young reader, one which older picture book fans will probably find quite funny and certainly unique in the world of bunny books.