THE RABBIT, THE DARK, AND THE COOKIE TIN

A rabbit who is not ready to go to
sleep traps The Dark in a cookie tin.

The Dark (joined by a chorus of
bats, owls, and baby foxes) quietly remonstrates from within the cookie tin,
explaining that certain animals are awake at night and also that without
bedtime there can be no breakfast. Gradually, Rabbit’s grumpy resistance
fades…then vanishes when he sees his prized carrots wilting in the constant
daytime heat. At last he opens the tin—a flap that lifts to unfold a big,
spectacular starry sky—and: “ ‘WOW!’ said Rabbit. ‘The Dark can be so
beautiful.’ ” Off goes Rabbit to bed, and barely has The Dark begun to murmur a
bedtime story before he’s snoozing away. O’Byrne endows her anthropomorphic
bunny with particularly expressive ears, adds several distressed but cute
creatures, and depicts The Dark as a nebulous, unthreatening patch of blackness
with no feature except a hand reaching into the tin for an offered cookie. The
idea isn’t exactly original, but the strong connections between the narrative
and the pictures give this a leg up over Anthony Pearson and Bonnie Leick’s
similarly themed Baby Bear Eats the Night (2012), while Jöns Mellgren’s Elsa
and the Night (2014) shares the conceit (and even the tin) but goes in a
different, deeper emotional direction.

Similarly resistant young children
will be lulled by a subtly soothing tone that even the outsized pop-up doesn’t
disturb. (Pop-up/picture book. 3-5)