The Hungry Little Bunny

Last Thursday was a gold banner day – a once in a lifetime day! And it is all thanks to social media and the Throwback Thursday theme. Two weeks ago I decided to post my first #tbt picture on Facebook. Last week I chose a picture of myself sharing a favorite book with my 6-month old sister.

After I ran it through the scanner and had the picture enlarged on my computer, I gave a gasp. OMG! It was THAT book. The one I’d been looking for most of my adult life. My favorite book as a young child. I could describe it. I remembered the story about the rabbit that didn’t want his carrots and went around to see what the other animals ate. But I didn’t remember the name of the book or what the cover looked like. I had been looking for it FOREVER. At least it felt like it. I had searched libraries, described it to old children’s librarians, gone through the union catalog at library school hoping to find a likely title, searched the Golden Book archives, and tried multiple search strategies online.

Well, they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and I guess they are right! I got to work searching Google images for 1950s children’s books about rabbits. It didn’t take long to find a cover of a rabbit that had the same distinctive black ears that you can see in the photo above. The minute I saw it I got goosebumps. But I still wasn’t sure. Then I found this You Tube video of someone reading the book: The Hungry Little Bunny. The minute I saw the first page, I started crying. Yes, at work. I found my book!!!

Here it is on ebay, and this book is now MINE:

Update: April 22

I was out of town visiting my folks for Easter this past weekend. Got home very late last night so didn’t check the mail box until on my way to work this morning. Yes, a package had arrived! I opened it as soon as I got to work. My co-workers have followed this story and felt that this moment required documentation, so with cell phone at the ready:

There I am, trying not cry yet again! It’s been quite the emotional journey! The book is in excellent condition and has that wonderful old book smell. Looking at it now, the illustrations are absolutely wonderful. I love how realistic the animals are, but at the same time they have the exaggerated big eyes that make baby animals so cute. Was this inspiration for the film animators of Bambi?

And look at the wonderful flowers! I wouldn’t have noticed that at age 3, but the gardener me does now. Almost every page has a different flower illustrated, like the lady slipper and the bellflower shown here.

Still 5 stars after 55 years!

My 2014 Reading Goals

Yes, it’s already March, but I set out my 2014 reading goals last November or so. Just thought I should get around to saying what my goals are, and what sort of books I might be reviewing this year. 48 books was my overall goal last year, and I reached 47. So I’m not going to increase it this year. 4 books a month is about all I can manage!

12 of these are determined by my face-to-face book club called the Daytimers. We read a different genre every month although our categories may change slightly from year to year. I joined this group in order to read things that are outside of my comfort zone, but since I select all the books for the group, I can tweak it to suit myself! No “Harlequin” romances for example! I’ll pick a love story with some literary merit…for example, The Shoemaker’s Wife, which we read for February this year. Other categories include a children’s book, mystery, historical fiction, a prize winner, a classic, a Minnesota author, a biography or memoir, etc.

The next 12 I am calling leftovers from last year. That includes more books related to Moby Dick, Pride and Prejudice, and the Tudors.

A new challenge is to read 12 or so books that include “Wife” in the title. I just thought that would be fun and different. It seemed like there have been a lot of such books lately: The Paris Wife, The Aviator’s Wife, The Tiger’s Wife, and of course, again, The Shoemaker’s Wife. So you’ll see that as a running theme this year.

I am hoping that 6 or so books will actually have something to do with Wales! For a long time, I have meant to post some guest reviews along those lines, as well. Our local St. David’s Society has a book group that meets bimonthly. I have not been participating, but I do have permission to post their reviews from the Society’s newsletter.

And finally, I want to revisit some of my favorite books from childhood and young adulthood – books that made a deep impression, and that I still remember after all these years. My very first favorite book was a picture book about a baby bunny who decides he is tired of carrots and goes around asking the other animals about what they eat. I remember he is quite dismayed by the dog’s bone. Eventually he decides it’s okay to just be a bunny and goes back home to his very worried mama. I’ve always thought the title was something like The Naughty Bunny or The Runaway Bunny. But it is NOT The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown nor is it The Naughty Bunny by Richard Scarry. I have searched for this book for 40 years, with no luck. So if it rings a bell with someone, PLEASE let me know. The illustrations were realistic, but cute, kind of like Garth Williams. I used to think it was a Golden Book, but I have searched the entire Golden Book catalog without finding it. It had to have been published before 1960, possibly well before then, since a lot of family books were gotten from book sales and yard sales. I haven’t given up hope of finding it, but I have been looking for a very, very long time.