Dog and Rabbit - Hardcover

A conversation starter for preschoolers.Dog and Rabbit are fine on their own, but they each want a friend. Pleasantly square pages contain softly edged illustrations mostly separated by negative space, emphasizing the emotional and physical distance between the animals. Chunky, black, handwriting-inspired type contrasts with the negative space and balances the gentle blues, greens, and browns that make up the bulk of the color palette. Brown, floppy-eared Dog eventually notices Rabbit and wishes for friendship, but gray Rabbit is fixated on what he believes is a bunny inside Dog's house. Even as Dog is thinking about Rabbit on one of the rare double-page spreads, Rabbit looks up at the same evening moon thinking about the unreachable bunny. But once Rabbit wanders into Dog's house to discover that the bunny is a refrigerator magnet, the pair quickly settles into an amicable friendship. The duo's contentment is fortunate, for no other potential matches seem to exist save for a few fleeting glimpses of a red bird. The colors, sparse illustrations, and predictable plot make this a satisfactory beginning book about friendship for young children. Grown-up readers may go down rabbit holes of their own, wondering whether Rabbit is settling for Dog and about the merits of waiting around for others to arrive at their own realizations. An odd-couple friendship story with a focus on perception and patience.
--Kirkus Reviews

Barney Saltzberg is the author and illustrator of close to 50 books for children, including Beautiful Oops!, Arlo Needs Glasses, Andrew Drew and Drew, and the bestselling Touch and Feel Kisses series with over one million copies in print. Additionally, he's recorded four albums of music for children.