A Review of Ribbit Rabbit by Candace Ryan and Mike Lowery

I met Candace Ryan at an SCBWI Conference in Los Angeles a few years ago, and every once in a while we get together to talk shop. A couple of weeks ago I attended her book launch for Ribbit Rabbit at Once Upon a Time in Montrose, California. (Cool children's bookstore—I want to go back!)

You should understand that Candace has a gift that makes for a particularly intriguing type of picture book—she's a master of wordplay. I'm guessing she's good at Scrabble, too!

In Ribbit Rabbit, Candace uses a mere smattering of words to create an entire plot about two friends and their interactions. Here's how the story begins:

Frog and Bunny are BEST friends.
Ribbit Rabbit.
Rabbit Ribbit.

They go swimming together.
Ribbit Rabbit.
Dip it, dab it.

Amazingly, all of the pair's activities, including a quarrel-and-making up scenario, are then chronicled using the same rhyme pattern. I think my favorite phrase is what is said when they eat peanut butter sandwiches. And there's a whole subplot about a robot toy which leads to a couple of new sounds on the very last page...

Illustrator Mike Lowery has a refreshing new illustrative style that plays particularly well in this book made up entirely of non-white pages of various hues. The predominant colors are beige, blue, green, and a brown-orange shade. A gray background is used only once, when the friends have quarreled.

Lowery's figures are drawn quite simply, but their facial expressions manage to say a great deal, e.g., when Bunny is shown wrapping something, his brows furrowed and his little tongue sticking out with concentration. (Note the child awareness there: a grown-up wouldn't sweat over the task of wrapping a gift, but it's a pretty challenging activity for a little kid.)

I like the way Frog and Bunny engage in imaginative play, the kinds of things they fight over, and the earnest way they make up. The few sentences given in addition to the rhymed phrases are thoughtfully selected. The author has a particularly good way of explaining what happens when two friends quarrel—how fighting can start out small and grow bigger. "Until every BIG and little thing makes them fight." Then after Frog and Bunny have quarreled, we are told, "And they find themselves all alone." Accompanied by a rather poignant spread showing each one on one side of the page, separated by a tall pile of toys, fiddling with two pieces of the toy they have pulled apart. This theme has been covered in dozens of picture books, but there's something especially sensitive about how it is handled in this book.

So, while lots of people out there are rhyming, few of them are creating stories quite as complex and emotionally satisfying as Ribbit Rabbit. It makes me smile to think that Candace's rather sophisticated wordplay is put through its paces in the seemingly humble context of a book for small children. The teacher in me says that little kids will not only like the sounds of this book and the way its story unfolds, they will also broaden their unconscious awareness about the possibilities of language.

A Review of Animal House by Candace Ryan

I've been so caught up in the middle grade and YA books I've been reading, I confess I've gotten behind on my picture book reviews. Here's a goodie that came out this summer.

Animal House is an intelligent picture book, designed for smart little cookies who like wordplay. In the context of verifying a homework excuse—a "vulchair" ate the narrator's homework—teacher Mrs. Nuddles comes to visit and discovers a house made of animals, not to mention portmanteau words.

If most of us were to sit down and try to invent these things, I'm guessing we would come up with three or four, but Ryan's inventiveness is astonishing: she's got a hampster to put the laundry in, a boarway to walk through, a microwave (note the word "crow") to cook with, and a back perch (the fish) to sit on, to name just a few.

Mrs. Nuddles runs a-fowl of Jeremy's household and needs rescuing, but she eventually takes the entire school class on a field trip to a mooseum, getting into the spirit of things. The plot here may be of less interest than the wordplay, which will make teachers itch to design a language lesson.

Check out this sample page:

Jamie left the skink running, and it knocks Mrs. Nuddles up toward the sealing. The chandeldeer tries to catch her, but his antlers get stuck in the sealing's whiskers.
Luckily, one of our armapillows comes to her rescue.
"Why, thank you," Mrs. Nuddles says, straightening her dress.

The artwork will help young readers explore which animals are meant by each term in the text, as some are a little harder to figure out than others. Illustrator Nathan Hale is probably best known for his work on Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack, two graphic novels by Shannon "Not His Wife or Even His Cousin" Hale. Here he uses a style halfway between cartoon and realism, with a wink and a nod. Incorporating some of these animals into the walls and furniture must have been a bit of a challenge, but Hale pulls it off smoothly.

After reading the book, your kids might want to design their own houses, whether they incorporate animals, toys, monsters, or robots.

I can't decide which features of Ryan's Animal House I like best... probably the "windodo" and the "harecase." But, as depicted by Hale, Jeremy's mother's "zebras" (ze-bras) made me laugh the most!

Now, I've mentioned that books, like movies, tend to come out in surprising waves. It certainly isn't enough to constitute a trend, but I will note that Jon Agee's picture book, Mr. Putney's Quacking Dog, also came out this summer and features portmanteau creatures. Only his book uses a question-and-answer format, lacking the narrative or the house context of Ryan's. The two would obviously make a nice pairing. I'm guessing second and third graders would be the best audience for Animal House, as well as for Agee's book.

(I was going to try to create an animal portmanteau word out of "review" for the post title, but all I could think of was "emu" and then I got stuck. Kudos to Candace Ryan!)