Apologies for the delay in getting to this. Life keeps happening, and my days fill up with excuses.
This month’s selection is a delightful little book called Rabbit. It is by one Charles Higgins (a pen name, so don’t hunt around for a Facebook page), and it recounts a number of adventures/mishaps involving a monosyllabic ragamuffin boy called Rabbit. Various disasters keep happening to him, but they always seem to land right side up.
The book hooks you two ways. One is that you get to know the main character Rabbit really well, but without knowing anything about him—family, home, background, all that. Who is this kid? Where did he come from? The set up makes you want to turn the next page—which, you should realize, ought to be the central goal of every writer. What will it take to make the reader really want to turn the next page?
The second reason for reading is that Higgins (let us say) has a real gift for turns of phrase—”far off thunder muttered at the world,” “a clean, proper sort of weasel,” “looking at her is like getting grabbed and pulled around by the ear,” “as disheveled as a dust pan,” and so on. Read for the metaphors, and also for the surprises in how they are placed.
If you are the sort of parent who has trouble keeping the requisite number of books in your home library, I think your kids will like this one.