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Wolfie the Bunny | December 2, 2015

by Ame Dyckman, illustrated by Zachariah OHora (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, February 2015)

When the Bunny family comes home one day to find a wolf pup on their doorstep, young Dot is the only one that’s suspicious. Her parents take Wolfie in and are “too smitten to listen” to her pleading refrain that “He’s going to eat us all up!” Dot’s frustration grows as her parents seem inexplicably blind to Wolfie’s voracious appetite or that fact that he follows her around, even occasionally drooling on her. But readers will soon see that Wolfie’s somewhat suspect behavior is actually just misinterpreted sibling affection—and that Dot is being a little too hard on her adopted brother. It’s a realization that only comes to her in the book’s exciting and hilarious conclusion, when the two kids make a trip to the local carrot co-op and have a run-in with another woodland animal with a big appetite of its own.

With stories like Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs constantly in the story-time rotation, children learn from an early age to be wary of wolves—but that trope gets turned on its head here. Dyckman’s humorous text marries perfectly with OHora’s whimsical acrylic paintings to spin a delightful picture book about misconceptions, sibling rivalry, and unconventional families. I’d eat it up, I love it so.

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