My Favorite Book This Week

This week, I read Judge Rabbit and the Tree Spirit adapted by Lina Mao Wall and Cathy Spagnoli and illustrated by Nancy Hom. It is a Cambodian folk tale telling the story of man who goes to fight for the king. The man's wife is sad, so, a tree spirit takes his form and pretends to be him. The real man comes back but the tree spirit won't leave. The man finds help from Judge Rabbit, a resident of the forest and a pretty clever animal.

I found this story because I was looking for mythology and folk tales. I really liked the illustrations. I thought the style was deceptively simple and captured a wood-cut like feel. I really liked Judge Rabbit...I thought he (or she) was a great character. In fact, he reminded me of Bugs Bunny from the classic cartoons. Bugs often took care of his adversaries with nothing more than a trick that exploited their over-inflated egos and Judge Rabbit did the same. Plus Judge Rabbit worked cheap...he only wanted some bananas!