Uplifting. Quirky. Colourful.

What Inspires
by Alison Hughes (illustrated by Ellen Rooney)

Victoria: Orca Book Publishers, 2024
$21.95 / 978145983768

My Bunny Lies Over the Ocean
by Bill Richardson (illustrated by Bill Pechet)

Halifax: Running the Goat, 2024
$21.99 / 9781998802098

Reviewed by Ginny Ratsoy

*

Our protagonists, three unnamed children with a dog in tow, inhabit a park on a spring day. The wind incites the action: the trio imitates the “seed dance,” and art ensues.

Dancing, singing, painting, musical instrument playing, and castle construction catalyze interaction with all ages in the pastoral setting.

The park day culminates in play acting and a parade in which both humans and canines participate. The sky, with its clouds and sun, sets the stage for their nocturnal activities. At home in their respective beds, the three continue to create as they dream.

Whether on foot, atop a bicycle, or in a wheelchair, the children both animate and are animated by their environment. Here, nature is a multi-pronged catalyst: the children interact not only with elements of the landscape but also with the human and animal world in ways that foster their imaginations. Nature is the raw material from which their worlds gather meaning.

But this is a city park. What of swings, slides, and the like? While such equipment is visible in Ellen Rooney’s illustrations (if not directly in Alison Hughes‘ text), it functions as a backdrop: that is, some children may be using the slide as a prop; however, natural elements and the company the children keep are the real instigators in this light-hearted drama. 

The south Okanagan’s award-winning illustrator’s mixed-media illustrations (pencil, found and textured papers, and digital drawing tools) are winning in their simplicity and vibrancy, and they certainly manifest the action and enhance the imaginative power of Hughes’ (Hit the Ground Running) text.

 What Inspires is a charming flight of fancy, likely to inspire action in its young readers. 

*

Vancouver’s award-winning masters of whimsy Bill Richardson and Bill Pechet (Lola Flies Alone) are back at it, this time with a punning parodic rendition of the traditional folk song that places a misplaced stuffed toy at the centre of an epic journey across seas, over skies, and on land.

Bunny’s return entails the participation of a motley crew of creatures–from whales to kangaroos. 

Taking advantage of the simple four line rhyme scheme and refrain of the original, Richardson plays up alliteration and just plain silliness, as when Bunny exits the whale: “She breached, belched, then brashly barfed Bunny.”

If the text invites flights of fancy, the quaint, amusing illustrations make good on that call. Maps of Bunny’s travels bookend the tale to neatly ground it. Yet it is Pechet’s visions of Bunny in the cozy bedroom that is in the whale’s inside and a squid with myriad telephone receivers in its clutches that are likely to evoke hearty laughter and repeat visits.  

A new-to-this reader feature is a QR code that leads to a clever turn: a musical version of the book’s text–by a group called the Barbershop Bunnies. Other young readers are likely to agree with one blurber’s assessment of this novelty. The “real 7-and-a half-year-old” writes, “I really loved singing it. It really brings out your voice.”

My Bunny Lies over the Ocean, which ends on a more decisive and positive note than the work that inspired it, is a captivating rescue-and-return adventure. It takes more than a village to guide this rabbit home.

Ginny Ratsoy is Professor Emerita at Thompson Rivers University. Her scholarly publications have focused on Canadian fiction, theatre, small cities, third-age learning, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Recently, Ratsoy was honoured and humbled to receive the 2024 Margaret Cleaveley Award for Canadian Literature Instruction from the Kamloops Adult Learners Society, where she has been a volunteer instructor since 2007 and, since her retirement in 2020, has also been involved as a board member and course coordinator. [Editor’s note: Ginny Ratsoy has reviewed books by Caroline Woodward, David Suzuki, Iona Whishaw, Danny Ramadan, Polly Horvath, Yolanda Ridge, Winona Kent, Amanda Lewis, Gregor Craigie, Iona Whishaw, Elizabeth Bass, Karen L. Abrahamson, & J.E. Barnard (eds.), and Gregor Craigie & Kathleen Fu for BCR.]

*

The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-25: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction and peotry)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an online book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, Maria Tippett, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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