HARE'S CHOICE - Hardcover

Rezensionen

Grade 4-6-- A hare is not a rabbit--a distinction worth noting, for bunnies have become the bad guys of children's books, symbolizing the genre at its saccharine, sentimental, and cuddly worst. Happily, this very British import is about a rabbit's larger--and decidedly uncuddly--cousin. When a brother and sister, "both about ten," discover a dead doe hare by the side of a road, they find it too beautiful to bury without a "proper funeral." At school, they--and 13 classmates--spontaneously decide to create a story about the hare so that it will stay alive for them even after the burial. Their invention creates a cosmic choice for the hare, who--although dead--is yet alive in a different state of being. Should she choose to go to an eternally peaceful Valley where she will be the Queen of the Hares, or should she go to a place where dwell animals whose purchase on eternity is guaranteed by the fact that they are characters in children's stories? The hare's choice is deliberately left ambiguous so that readers will have to make their own decision about which is better. If the book has a fault, it is that the differences between the choices are too subtle, neither of them requiring any ennobling sacrifice on the hare's part. Otherwise, Hare's Choice is a gratifyingly unsentimental celebration of the life-affirming and life-enriching power of story and offers readers--in the hare--a character who will, indeed, live in their imaginations and memories. --Michael Cart, Beverly Hills Public Library
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