#761 of 1001 · August 31, 2022

Here is a look at First Tomato, one of three volumes in the Voyage to the Bunny Planet series by Rosemary Wells. Claire spends a disheartening day at school, confounded by both academics and physical education. While waiting for the bus during a snowstorm, she is spirited away to the Bunny Planet by the kindly Bunny Queen Janet, who shows her through a mystical arch and grants her the day she should have had. Claire finds herself outside a cottage in a quiet seaside village, where her mother asks her to pick a beautifully ripe tomato and other fresh vegetables for a delicious soup. In the bus on the way home, she dozes off, happy and relaxed. Wells grants her protagonist’s wish in fantasy rather than reality, employing a startling textual shift from third-person prose to inviting first-person anapestic rhyming couplets. Her art depicts the mundane world in drab colors and the lovely tomato as a spot of bright red against the garden’s soft green. #voyage #bunny #planet #first #tomato #cottage #garden #book #books #childrensbooks #beautifulbooks #picturebook #picturebooks #picturebookillustration #picturebookillustrations #picturebookart #childrensbookillustration #childrensliterature #illustration #kidlit #kidsbooks #bookworm #booklover #booklovers #bibliophile #bookstagram #bookstagrammer #bookstagrammers #instabook #instabooks