Ah!

March 23, 2015
Originally published in France, Collet’s (All by Myself!) offbeat story traces a white rabbit’s befuddling day as it explores a tunnel, gets bitten by a mosquito, tries to shake off a spider, and falls in love. With ears like TV antennae and the rotund body of a wombat, the rabbit isn’t much of a talker (the text consists mostly of exclamations and sound effects), but he makes up for it with his dramatic antics. Having realized that a tiny blue spider
is resting on his head, the rabbit leaps, twirls, and sweats his way across two spreads before collapsing into a nap (at which point the spider climbs right back onto him). Spagnol (Little Benguin) carries the visual comedy into the story’s climactic love sequence, in which the hero woos a similar-looking female rabbit. Their courtship is short-lived—she has a blue spider on her, too, and the rabbits run screaming in opposite directions after they spot them—but the spiders get a happy ending, at least. An amusing, if somewhat thin, adventure for those who like their humor absurd. Ages 2–5.

March 1, 2015
A rabbit and a spider engage in a strange adventure.An unsuspecting rabbit is happily going about his business when he enters a kind of tunnel and discovers a spider, which promptly attaches itself to him. He runs, jumps, and yells, but nothing can dislodge it. Exhausted, the rabbit rests while the spider bides its time. When the rabbit wakes, he pays court to a lovely lady rabbit (so identified by eyelashes and wrist bangles), who, unknowingly, carries a spider of her own. Seeing the two spiders, they run away in panic, at which point the spiders get together gleefully. A curious bird and a dragonfly lurk nearby and watch all the action dispassionately. Various spellings of "Ah" provide most of the text, alternately expressing panic, satisfaction, or contentment. The spiders utter the only sentence, "How silly they are," while laughing merrily at the rabbits' fear and their own happy ending. The creatures are rendered in black line cartoon drawings with splashes of color in the secondary characters and in flowers and a rainbow. There is constant movement across the double-page spreads as the characters meet, separate, and meet again, but very young readers may have difficulty in following or understanding the plot. The underlying mood is rather nasty; the spiders are bullies who succeed at the rabbits' expenses, while the bystanders do nothing. Creepy and uncomfortable-rather like discovering that a spider is riding on your head. (Picture book. 4-8)