The Bunny Band

Writing, storytelling, broadcasting, librarianship – Winnipeg-born Bill Richardson has turned his efforts to all of these things.

In the case of the book in hand, he uses his talents in composing verse to tell the story of Lavinia, a badger, who loves gardening. The problem is that her verdant beds of vegetables are being attacked by some mysterious night-time visitor.

She sets her backyard snare and waits:

At midnight, when the moon was full,
she heard a chilling shriek.
“At last!” she cried. “I’ve nabbed the knave
who eats my peas and leeks.”
The moon shone on her garden.
She went. She looked. She saw
a white and frightened bunny
with her rope wrapped round his paw.

The frightened rabbit trades his freedom for a promise to return with help that will make the garden grow even better and more lush. Lavinia is skeptical but lets the little animal go anyway. Her surprise is evident when not only the rabbit she had freed but many others come in numbers. Here I was reminded of the old storytime favourite, Wanda Gag’s Millions of Cats when Richardson writes, “There were bunnies, bunnies, bunnies, by the dozen, by the score –cream and tan and black and brown and more and more and more.” This is the bunny band!

Lavinia watched, astonished,
as the silent silvery moon
shone its light on mandolins,
on banjos and bassoons.
on harps and ukuleles –
It was bright as bright as day –
trumpets, bagpipes, fifes and drums,
the band began to play.

Over time, the bunnies’ music does the trick, causing the produce in Lavinia’s garden to grow astonishingly large (as, for example, ‘onions huge, like moose’ and zucchini ‘far from weeny were the size of a caboose’). The upshot of the produce overload is a prize-winning entry at the fall fair and a vegetarian feast for all concerned in celebration.

The story is not highly original, but the slightly absurd choice of detail and the lilting iambic rhyme are engaging. Roxanna Bikadoroff has put her illustrative talents to good use in the softly-coloured, lightly outlined pictures that fill all the space on every page. She is especially masterful in her use of light and shadow to show us how much of the action takes place at night.

Bunny Band is a satisfactory addition for public and preschool picture book collections.