Too many carrots

Hudson (Bear and Duck) handily juggles profuse visual humor and a passel of life lessons, including taking only what you need, sharing what you have, and not taking advantage of friends. Greed, rather than gluttony, is the crux of Rabbit's problem: he does more hoarding of carrots than eating them, until his burrow overflows to the point that he's forced out. Luckily, Rabbit has several generous friends who offer to share their homes-offers that Rabbit happily accepts. "Maybe it's a little too snug for two?" suggests Tortoise, as Rabbit climbs into his shell. "Not at all," replies an oblivious Rabbit. After cracking Tortoise's shell, Rabbit moves from one nervous host to the next, his stash of carrots destroying each home. Simultaneously sassy and sweet, Hudson's illustrations place her cast of cuddly, expressive animals in a variety of slapstick situations. It's unsurprising but still satisfying when Rabbit's conscience finally kicks in; taking responsibility for the mayhem he's caused, he opens his home to his friends. When life gives you carrots, Hudson suggests, make carrot cake (and juice and soup and cupcakes). Ages 3-5. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

When Rabbit's unbridled mania for collecting carrots leaves him unable to sleep in his cozy burrow, other animals offer to put him up. But to Rabbit, their homes are just more storage space for carrots: Tortoise's overstuffed shell cracks open; the branch breaks beneath Bird's nest; Squirrel's tree trunk topples over; and Beaver's bulging lodge collapses at the first rainstorm. Impelled by guilt and the epiphany that "carrots weren't for collectingthey were for SHARING!" Rabbit invites his newly homeless friends into his intact, and inexplicably now-roomy, burrow for a crunchy banquet. This could be read (with some effort) as a lightly humorous fable with a happy ending, and Hudson's depictions of carrot-strewn natural scenes, of Rabbit as a plush bunny, and of the other animals as, at worst, mildly out of sorts support that take. Still, the insistent way Rabbit keeps forcing himself on his friends and the magnitude of the successive disasters may leave even less-reflective readers disturbed. Moreover, as Rabbit is never seen actually eating a carrot, his stockpiling looks a lot like the sort of compulsive hoarding that, in humans, is regarded as a mental illness. Superficially appealing; much less so upon closer examination. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.