![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/Lobel1.jpg\")
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The happy rabbits were hungry no more.”<\/em>
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\nHappy Easter \/ Passover to one and all … Since I have children who do the Easter thing (egg hunts and such), I have bunnies for you all this morning.<\/p>\n
To be exact, I’ve got Jan Thomas’s<\/a><\/strong> Easter bunny (plus one eager skunk) and Caldecott Honor winner Anita Lobel’s<\/a><\/strong> bunnies-plural. <\/p>\n Anita Lobel’s<\/a><\/strong> 10 Hungry Rabbits: Counting & Color Concepts<\/a><\/strong><\/em>, released by Knopf in February, is for very young readers, a beautiful picture book which seamlessly weaves both counting (one to ten) and color concepts in one warm story. As you can see in the spreads below (which are sans text), her gouache and watercolor spreads are detailed and colorful in this simple, scrumptious tale, which incidentally would get the thumbs-up from all gardeners and so-called foodies. <\/p>\n Mama Rabbit has ten very hungry little rabbits but nothing for her soup pot. When Papa Rabbit notes that good things for the soup pot are bound to be found in the garden, the counting begins. Highlighting bright, bold colors along with the numbers, clearly laid out on the page for young, curious eyes, Lobel has each young rabbit find and pull something delicious from the garden. And then … “Here comes dinner!” as the young rabbits haul in a giant basket full of fresh vegetables. “Never one to miss a detail, Lobel delicately shades the whisper-thin onion skins and every bump on the potato,” writes the Kirkus<\/em> review. <\/p>\n Below are some more illustrations from this engaging, trim-sized book (for the tiniest of hands). <\/p>\n As made clear in my 2009 interview with Jan Thomas<\/a><\/strong> (for which Betsy Bird<\/a><\/strong> and Adrienne Furness<\/a><\/strong> joined me), I really enjoy Jan’s books. They make me laugh very hard, in fact. It was with happiness that I saw she has a new picture book, The Easter Bunny’s Assistant<\/a><\/em><\/strong>, released by Harper in January of this year. Thomas’s strengths are, once again, on display in this new title: her spot-on comic timing; her never-too-forced invitation to children to talk back to her characters, as she breaks the fourth wall of the book; her droll humor … it’s all here. <\/p>\n In this one, the Easter bunny wants to teach us how to dye beautiful Easter eggs, but he runs into some trouble, seeing as how his assistant is a skunk who gets a bit stinky when he gets really excited. And he REALLY LOVES making beautiful Easter eggs. <\/p>\n Here are some illustrations from the book, and I thank Jan for sharing:<\/p>\n 10 HUNGRY RABBITS: COUNTING & COLOR CONCEPTS. Copyright \u00a9 2012 by Anita Lobel. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, New York.<\/em><\/p>\n THE EASTER BUNNY’S ASSISTANT. Copyright \u00a9 2012 by Jan Thomas. Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, New York. Images reproduced by permission of Jan Thomas.<\/em><\/p>\n Note for any new readers: 7-Imp\u2019s 7 Kicks is a weekly meeting ground for taking some time to reflect on Seven(ish) Exceptionally Fabulous, Beautiful, Interesting, Hilarious, or Otherwise Positive Noteworthy Things from the past week, whether book-related or not, that happened to you. New kickers are always welcome. <\/p>\n My weekend is filled with lots of colored eggs, chocolate bunnies, Peeps*, and, um, even more chocolate, so I’m going to keep it simple this week. Besides, is anyone even around? Prove me wrong, and leave your kicks, if you got ’em!<\/p>\n [* I think that, long after life leaves this blue planet we live on (which I hope is a very<\/em> long time from now, if ever), Peeps will remain in all their twisted glory. Don’t you agree?]<\/em> <\/p>\n “The Rabbit family sat down to bowls of delicious vegetable soup. Yum!The happy rabbits were hungry no more.”(Click to enlarge spread) Happy Easter \/ Passover to one and all … Since I have children who do the Easter thing (egg hunts and such), I have bunnies for you all this morning. To be exact, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seven-good-things-before-monday","category-picture-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
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