The Bunny Burrow Buyer’s Book, clever, but familiar

Easter is a great time for bunny books. The Bunny Burrow Buyer’s Book by Steve Light takes a look at the every expanding size of George and Petunia Bunny’s family. They are bunnies after all and the old burrow for two just isn’t cutting it any more. The art and detail in the book will attract readers 4 and up and its vocabulary is simple enough for a 6 year old to read it with a little assistance.

The Bunny Burrow Buyer’s Book, A Tale of Rabbit Real Estate is drawn in pen and ink style. As George and Petunia visit each house their family gets bigger. They have one bunny, then two, seven and so on until they reach their new home, a giant Oak tree where the entire, now massive family can live.

There are splashes of red throughout the book, marking the insides of each burrow, mushrooms and Petunia’s dress. Savvy young readers will also take note of the thick, black brush stroke that goes through the book until it ends at their new burrow.  All of the pages fold out into bigger gatefolds that take up two or four pages. In turn, some of them have cut outs that let readers glimpse ‘inside’ the bunny burrow.

This is a clever, dry book that gives young readers lots of room to breathe. Using sparse vocabulary and big art allows parents to guide younger children through the burrows, trees, bunnies and other things that occupy the Bunny family.

It’s a fun book that never boils with excitement, but it’s not intended to. It is also tough to look at The Bunny Burrow Buyer’s Book and not take note of the elephant in the room. In this case the elephant is actually the bunny and their resemblance to Matt Groening’s Life in Hell characters, Binky, Sheba and Bongo.

“oh, that cartoon that you like has a new book”, my wife said when she first saw The Bunny Burrow Buyer’s Book. ‘no, that’s not them, it just has a resemblance’, I clarified. “It sure does”, she uttered as she looked through the book.  If you know Groening’s earlier work you’ll still enjoy the book, but will have Binky in the back of your head.  If that’s all Greek to you then jump on into this wry look at how a growing bunny family finds its next burrow.