Author: Eileen Wacker
Publisher: Once Kids
Rating: WORTHY!
DISCLOSURE: Unlike the majority of reviews in this blog, I've neither bought this book nor borrowed it from the library. This is a "galley" copy ebook, supplied by Net Galley. I'm not receiving (nor will I expect to receive or accept) remuneration for this review. The chance to read a new book is often reward aplenty!
Illustrated by Curt Spurging.
Erratum:
P4 "moive" should be "movie"
This is another in a growing series of which I reviewed one edition in July last year: Rainbow Panda and the Firecracker Fiasco, so I was pleased to have this chance to revisit that world and see how things are going. This story is from the same stable and by the same author as the earlier one, but it's about a different character.
I don't know what the marketing plan is for this book but I was unable to find it anywhere. I could find no useful references to it online. It wasn't on B&N nor was it available at Amazon although they did list it, and I couldn't even find a cover image out there! Normally I take the cover image for a blog illustration directly from the ebook if I can, but in this case, the one on my blog is from Net Galley.
In this edition, we follow the antics of Silver Bunny, who is bored in Orange Bunny's taekwondo class. I used to date someone who pursued taekwondo, so this was interesting to me. Silver already knows the moves, but she isn't disciplined enough to understand that you not only have to know the moves, you also have to live them - to be able to put your heart and soul into them to make them real and worthy.
Silver would far rather be off surfing, and isn't even remotely deterred by the fact that last time she went surfing she was almost swallowed by a whale - that was just an accident, she protests! Eventually she and her friends come up with a plan to sneak off and do their own thing.
This book is illustrated, but none of the illustrations were visible in my Adobe Digital Editions reader - it was all text and white space, so I can't show any samples as I normally do. I saw the illustrations in the Kindle edition, but they were grey scale, which effectively prevents me from saying anything useful about them, except that I recall them being really quite good and very colorful in the earlier volume I read. I can only assume that the illustrations in this volume will be along the same lines. This doesn't mean the illustrations won't be as good, but do note that the illustrator here is not the same one who illustrated Rainbow Panda.
Teaming up with a couple of hamsters (you know what hamsters can be like, I'm sure - they're almost as bad as rats for mischief and exploration), Silver Bunny goes surfing; then they look up Rainbow Panda to get help building a secret fort where they can make a movie about taekwondo. There may be a dragon involved here, too.... The problem is that things don't turn out too well, and they discover a valuable lesson about the importance of proper learning and sound preparedness.
As in the previous volume I read in this series, this one also features quite an extensive glossary explaining aspects of Far Eastern culture, including the things depicted in this story. I recommend this young children's book.
