Spring Is In The Air And In The Step of...

For someone who loves to collect books as well as read them the care given by some authors and illustrators with respect to their artistic selection of design and color is sheer delight.  Kevin Henkes newest book, Little White Rabbit, is picture perfect in every way.  Using his recognizable media of combining colored pencil and acrylic paint his book jacket and endpapers envelope us in calming pink and green reminiscent of a gentle spring morning.  He carries this theme to the front and back book covers; the front frames a little rabbit in pink and the back frames the same little rabbit in green. 

As little white rabbit hops through the grass, by the fir trees, over a rock, under the butterflies or past the cat he wonders.  What would it be like to be green, tall, not be able to move, flutter through the air or too scared to wonder anything?  In two page spreads Henkes visualizes those thoughts in what can only be described as graphics that clearly portray little white rabbit's imagining; graphics, that I might add, are suitable for framing.

Little white rabbit's wanderings conclude by arriving back to the nest, nose-nuzzling with his Mom and not wondering at all about who loves him.  Charming, simply charming...