My Friend Rabbit

My Friend Rabbit

Rohmann, E. (2003). My friend rabbit. Mexico: Scholastic.

Thanks, Joanne Hicks, for including standards and website help in this reflection! You have given me ideas for TWO more labels: Technology and Standards.

 This picture story book is a 2003 Caldecott Medal winner.   It is told in the third person from the point of view of the mouse.  The mouse has faith that rabbit means well, but everywhere he goes trouble follows him. 

Eric Rohmann tells a story of Rabbit, who has big ideas to solve problems.  These big ideas don’t always work out the way Rabbit had planned.  Which sometimes leads to hard feelings from friends, but through it all Mouse knows Rabbit means well.  In the story Rabbit wants to send Mouse flying in the airplane, this doesn’t turn out as planned and the airplane gets stuck in a tree.  Rabbit then comes up with a brilliant plan to retrieve the airplane.  This plan seems to be working until they realize where they have landed, but don’t worry Rabbit has an idea.

The story is told primarily through pictures, the visual elements set the mood.  The use of dotted curly lines creates the effect of the airplane’s movement.  The illustrator did a great job giving clues to Rabbit’s plan by drawing Rabbit pulling the tail of the animal he was going to use on one page and the rest of the elephant on the next page. I would stop and ask students to predict what animal the tail belonged to before moving on.  I feel the illustrator was able to portray the enormous size of the animals by using all the space on the page.  The illustrator at one point in the book had to change the direction of the illustrations to create the vertical forming of an animal tower.  

The following website had a great idea for ordinal numbers:  http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/lesson-plan/my-friend-rabbit-lesson-plan

I would use this with preschool or kindergarten to teach first, second, third and so forth. 

I would also use this book to teach social skills/friendship skills:

PL-EP-1.1.9 -Students will describe social (e.g., getting along with others, serving as team members) and emotional (e.g., expressing feelings, self-concept) health. DOK 1