Favorite Children's Books: Part I

This blog post is dedicated to my wife, because it’s her story. In some regards our marriage may substantiate the adage that opposites attract. Unlike me, she does not read blogs, would probably never write one, dislikes using email and reading on a computer screen. However, being an avid reader and lover of the printed page she has always wanted to work in a book store, an aspiration recently fulfilled with a part-time gig at a local venue. One day while guiding a young parent to the children’s section she came upon one of our old favorites, Rosemary Wells’ Bunny Planet series, but she couldn’t pause to browse them.

Later that night she lay in bed recalling the cadence in the story, dah da-dah, dah-dah  da-dah…, but the exact words alluded her. This led to her rummaging our boxes of stored kids books in the basement (yes, we saved our children’s  books). Retrieving the Wells' books, she had me read them to her aloud. Each story involves a bunny child who has some sort of a tough day. In Moss Pillows, it’s a trip to visit obnoxious cousins. First Tomato starts with a rough day at school. A transition then occurs, where in a quiet moment the hapless protagonist recalls the Bunny Planet. At this point comes the refrain my wife couldn’t recall: “Far beyond the moon and stars, twenty light-years south of Mars, spins the gentle Bunny Planet and the Bunny Queen is Janet.” Here the illustration shows the smiling Bunny Queen embracing a forlorn bunny child as she escorts it to the threshold of a large door with a banner over it reading “The Bunny Planet," where Janet enjoins, “Come in. Here’s the day that should have been.”

Whether we are opposites on some points, my wife and I are in total sync on others. It cracked me up that she wanted me to read the books aloud. All three of them! But I was eager to oblige. I loved hearing the words again. It’s not that the books are simply cute, though they are. And the art work by the author is also fantastic. What we agree on is that the charm of these stories is how they reassure a child with the basic lesson that there will be bad days, but not to despair, there should always be room for solace and reassurance, even if only in one’s  imagination.

A couple of days later we received a phone call from our eldest son, which was answered by his mom. Having finished college, he is just rounding out his first year of adult living in Manhattan, pursuing a very ambitious calling. Due to various factors, including changing his day job, he was feeling a bit blue. Often, whichever one of us fields our son’s call is the one to have the conversation, with the other shouting a hello or “love you!” in the background. It’s usually easy for the passive eaves dropper to intuit the basic gist of one of these exchanges. On this occasion, after giving the boy a sympathetic ear, mom told him to hold on a minute as she dashed upstairs. Through the receiver lying nearby I could hear her lift the upstairs extension and launch into reading one of the Bunny Planet books.  

Now whenever we are discussing our trials and tribulations we have a new reference to sum up the feeling, and humor one another. It’s about needing a trip to the Bunny Planet.