Synopsis
After the disappearance of her beloved pet rabbit from its outdoor cage, Rosemary joins her father in the hunt for the fox that has been lurking near their farm, only to discover a ragged, starving creature struggling desperately to survive the winter.
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From Booklist
Ages 3-6. A quiet, lovely first-person narrative and soft-toned, full-page pastel illustrations tell a country story that's rooted in particulars. In the icy depths of winter, Rosemary's father gives her a rabbit. She names her pet Annabelle, helps pound in the nails for the hutch, feeds the rabbit and cares for it, and worries that the crafty fox will get it. One afternoon she discovers that the rabbit is gone; she searches all afternoon and then goes with her father to hunt the fox in the icy, moonlit night. They wait in the stillness, but when she sees the lean, ragged fox and realizes its need, she shouts to save it, even though she and her father know that the fox took Annabelle. This could easily have been sentimental, but in her first book for children, poet Brutschy is understated. Words and pictures express a strong sense of the physical: the crunching of footsteps in the ice, the warmth of the rabbit in Rosemary's arms. Winter is a harsh, scary reality. Garns, who did the illustrations for Gonna Sing My Head Off (1992), uses the same combination of individual portraits and wide landscapes here, expressing the story's interwoven themes of coziness and danger. Hazel Rochman
From Kirkus Reviews
Rosemary treasures the rabbit she named ``Annabelle...the most beautiful name I had ever heard.'' When Annabelle disappears from her outdoor hutch, Papa takes his gun to hunt a fox that also threatens the hens; but when Rosemary sees it--``winter- thin, butterscotch-pale. Its coat...ragged, its body lean and hungry'' in the moonlight, she shouts ``No!'' before he can shoot. Though she knows the fox took Annabelle, he's not as ``big as a tiger'' and ``strong as a bear,'' as she'd imagined, but needy and vulnerable. It would be interesting to compare this honest, beautifully cadenced book--and its luminous, sensitive, roughly rendered art--with Red Fox Running (Clarion, 1993, received too late for review), where Wendell Minor's exquisitely detailed depiction of the fox belies Eve Bunting's description of a hunter struggling to survive and capturing scrupulously anonymous prey. (Picture book. 4-8) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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