bilbopooh's Full Review: Richard Scarry - Watch Your Step, Mr Rabbit!
One of my favorite sequences in a Disney movie is Belle, the exuberant ensemble song introducing viewers of Beauty and the Beast to the lovely, eccentric young heroine of the movie. Throughout much of the song, she walks along with "her nose stuck in a book," as one townsperson criticizes, oblivious to everything that is happening around her. By the end of the song, the town's in a tizzy, but Belle is no worse off than before.
Not everybody is so talented when it comes to walking and reading without incident. In Richard Scarry's Watch Your Step, Mr. Rabbit!, the rabbit of the title is so preoccupied with reading his newspaper that he has no idea where his feet are going. That's a problem, especially since a fresh stretch of cement lies directly in his path. Children will probably see his misstep coming. Less clear is how he's going to get out of his predicament when his feet appear to be so firmly stuck.
While none of the Busytown characters are mentioned by name, fans of Scarry's work will recognize such folks are Huckle Cat and Lowly Worm. There's always a lot going on in Scarry's book, and each two-page spread includes several characters. They all contribute to the background, but the text itself is very simple, with one or two very short sentences per page. In fact, the book advertises the fact that there are only 39 different words used throughout the story.
In the back of the book is a page on which all 39 words appear in a grid, making them easy to cut out and use as "mini learning cards". Another page details several options for using the cards, including matching each word to a word in the story, making up riddles that can be answered by one of the words, making sentences with the cards and creating a picture dictionary with the words and illustrations for each (though one wonders just how a child would illustrate the word "is"). There's also a helpful suggestion to put the cards in an envelope and tape the envelope to the inside back cover.
Watch Your Step, Mr. Rabbit! is a funny story whose illustrations offer plenty of room for discussion, especially on the subject of removing oneself from quickly drying cement. With the focus on the 39 individual words, it's a nice vocabulary builder, and it also teaches children to pay attention to where they walk lest they find themselves in a sticky situation.
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