Birthdays generate a lot of feelings. In the new Fancy Nancy book (whose activities feature in our Spring book fair), they are feelings of disappointment and the resultant anger at not being able to participate. In Russell Hoban's brilliant A Birthday for Frances, they are feelings of jealousy and hurt.
But birthdays can be peaceful, too. Charlotte Zolotow's Mr. Rabbit and the Lovely Present, illustrated by Maurice Sendak, offers one such birthday. A little girl is searching for a gift for her mother, but can't think what to get her. She asks Mr. Rabbit for his help--a lovely, long-limbed rabbit who looks mostly like a man but for his ears--and together they wander the woods to ponder the problem. They consider categories and things: "'She likes red,' said the little girl. 'Red,' said Mr. Rabbit. 'You can't give her red.'" They move on to specific things and groups of things--vehicles, birds, gems, heavenly bodies--before finding just the right things. It is a wonderfully peaceful book, full of ideas, full of love, full of the woman we never see but whom we come to know through the things she does and doesn't like.
