Rabbit and the Motorbike

Starred review from July 15, 2019
A fearful rabbit finds the courage to broaden his horizons in this picture book. Rabbit, anthropomorphically attired in overalls, lives in a wheat field that he never leaves. Instead, he waits for Dog--more sartorially adventurous in a black leather-fringed jacket, appropriate for motorbike travel--to visit and tell him stories of the road. But one day Dog dies, an event touchingly illustrated with an image of Rabbit sitting on his porch steps with drooping ears and drooping flowers. Rabbit is surprised that Dog leaves his motorbike to him, and he stores it away, admitting that he is too scared to use it. Author Hoefler takes a well-used theme and infuses it with a graceful poetic cadence that reads like a firelight tale as she relates how, yes, Rabbit does eventually work up the courage to travel on the motorbike, and yes, does come home again, enriched and changed. Illustrator Jacoby's smudgy, delicate illustrations depict these changes--both in Rabbit's appearance and demeanor and in the story's landscape--with an evocative, textural style that heightens the story's emotion. One illustration, a double-page spread of a beach from an overhead perspective, is initially disorienting, then exhilarating. The book adroitly combines spot illustrations and double-page spreads to establish and control the story's elegant, thoughtful pace. Graceful text and evocative illustrations combine in this story about the rewards of facing fears and trying something new. (Picture book. 3-7)

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Starred review from September 23, 2019
Timid Rabbit sticks close to home, where his friend Dog regales him daily with tales of his motorbike adventures as a young dog, including “the places he’d felt most alive, where he’d howled at the moon.” In textural watercolor and mixed-media spreads, Jacoby (Forever or a Day) renders Dog as a dashing terrier in a black leather jacket; Rabbit, wearing blue overalls, exudes emotion. In a depiction of a vicarious, imagined ride, the two zoom across a spread, leaving a ribbon of color behind them. Then one day, Dog doesn’t appear, and grieving Rabbit finds himself the owner of a motorbike. Hoefler (Great Big Things) describes Rabbit’s trepidation and conflicted feelings with lilting prose: “He hoped the bike would like not going anywhere.” But at his own, inch-by-inch rate, he conquers his fear. When he does set out at last, Jacoby’s spreads of the towering trees and expansive beaches he discovers deliver excitement and triumph. Alongside its elements of risk and loud noise, the story’s treatment of death and anxiety makes it a quiet, inward-turned tale. Ages 5–8. Agent: Steve Malk, Writers House.

Starred review from September 15, 2019
Grades K-3 *Starred Review* Rabbit lives alone in a field of wheat off the highway, and he never leaves, ever, even though he dreams of it each night. Instead, he relies on the stories of Dog, who in his youth traveled the country on his motorbike, before growing old and sick. Then, one day, Dog's visits stop, and the motorbike is left to Rabbit. He continues his quiet life with the bike, and the seasons pass until summer comes, and finally, he takes the bike out?"just down the road, and then off into the world?before coming back again with stories of his own to tell. Hoefler (Great Big Things, 2017) tells a somber story of longing, grief, and loss, without once mentioning death or depression. So much emotion is contained within the deceptively simple text?in the gentle language, cadence, and imagery?and Jacoby (Forever or a Day, 2018) matches the tone with her softly evocative watercolor and pastels, alternating the dark, oppressive grays of loneliness, nighttime, and winter with the muted rainbows of sunlit landscapes, promising hope. Rich in metaphor without an ounce of heavy-handedness, this timeless fable should be left out for a little one to come to and contemplate on their own, when the need arises.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)