Book Review: The Lazy Rabbit

The Lazy Rabbit by Wilkie J. Martin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A fairly dark and depressing children's book.
The Lazy Rabbit has heavy on bottom text; making this a good for dyslexia or children learning to read (although not as pretty as other font choices it works well here). However the difficulty of the words chosen is likely far past most children, even I didn't know what a 'gorse bush' was until I looked it up. I know we want children to expand their vocabulary but it seemed excessively hard to read. I would recommend adults pre-read this one to make sure they know all the words and can read it to the child. If you were looking to purchase a book for a new reader to practice with this is probably not a great choice.

Fair warning, the lazy rabbit ends up expiring in an untimely death. There is even water colour red across the page to symbolize the death of the rabbit. It reminded me of the old Aesop tales in which someone who doesn't follow the rules or do the smart thing inevitably looses. I had many books like this as a child that were the original tales including: Ariel cutting off her fin, the rabbit loosing everything in a race, etc. To me books like this are a good way to start teaching little ones that the world is not all butterflies and rainbows. The morale here is that the rabbit shouldn't have been so lazy; then maybe he would have survived..

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.


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