Big Bunny

Rowboat Watkins is a master when it comes to off the wall humour as he demonstrates in his latest picture book delivered wholly through dialogue.

It begins with an adult storyteller’s “one upon a time, there was a BIG BUNNY.”

‘A ginormously SCARY bunny?’ comes the response we assume is from a child.

And so it continues with the listener continually endeavouring to pep up and scarify the telling. Before long he has Big Bunny devouring truckloads of carrots but still continues to denigrate the storyline until he’s given control of it.

Perhaps control isn’t quite the right word for, the whole thing is running rampart with the main character consuming a bridge, a fleet of delivery trucks and then an entire city – buildings and all – very tasty ones built by the bus-driving giraffes. Let’s not go there but just say that Big Bunny seems to have emerged totally unscathed from all this and ready to make one final appearance.

Where that is, and to whom or perhaps what, I won’t say because it will give the whole lip-smacking game away. Watkins certainly let his imagination run wild in this tale: his telling in combination with his superb scenes of carrots, trucks and the all-consuming star of the story on the rampage make for a cracking read aloud that adults will enjoy as much as children. Makes sure you peruse the pages carefully for the less obvious jokes sprinkled throughout.