Richard Scarry's Watch Your Step, Mr Rabbit! (Step Into Reading, Step 1)

Mr. Rabbit's feet are stuck in cement and all of his friends are trying to get him out. Follow their hilarious hijinks in this delightful tale of what happens when you don't pay attention to where you are going!

Staff Review:

The summary given inside the front cover as part of this book's publishing details state: “Mr. Rabbit's feet get stuck in the street as he looks at his newspaper.” The story of Mr. Rabbit and his newspaper told through Richard Scarry's illustrations is so colourful and filled with humour that I cannot help but to want to read it over and over again, or at least flip through just to look at what every animal is doing on each page. It is so much fun to do this, to see which animals are actually involved in the storyline of Mr. Rabbit getting his feet stuck in wet cement, and to see which animals are just doing their own thing. A bug and mouse just sitting around and watching the commotion as five other animals and a worm try to use a long stick to push Mr. Rabbit out of the cement. The raccoon who just carries on digging a hole in the ground with his spade, right next to Mr. Rabbit who is stuck. The bug who holds out his pinwheel just as the animals hit on the brainwave to try blowing out Mr. Rabbit with a giant fan. These little details just make the story much more fun and help to lengthen the attention span of the child reading as he/she embarks on the journey of independent reading. Also, those little details will help sharpen the child's observational skills.

This may be a Step 1 reader aimed at preschool-kindergarten children, but I am not sure if the contents of the other Step 1 titles are this full of activity. Or maybe it is just Scarry's brand of illustration that manages to depict a hullabaloo so well and in such a comical manner. I guess will just have to pick up another one and see if that can equally capture my attention as this one did! If I (not a child) can find this book interesting, I would dare say that the book's targeted audience will find it to be even more so.