Tiny Rabbit’s Big Wish

The tiny rabbit that is the center of this story wishes for one thing: to grow to be big. He wants to be enormous like the forest, gigantic like a mountain, and as sky-high as a giraffe. Tiny Rabbit grows, but only to maturity as “a slighter taller small rabbit.” His ears, however, keep going. He explores his world with his strong sense of hearing and his big ears eventually detect a lion. Tiny Rabbit escapes down his burrow just in time and he decides he is perfectly happy to be small.

This is a fairly standard children’s tale, in both illustration and story. The strength of the book came as the story shifted focus to the rabbit’s sense of hearing, allowing children to experience the world from a different vantage point, one where sounds like beetle jaws crunching and butterfly wings flapping can be heard by the naked ear. The book’s message reminds children that what they perceive their weakness to be can actually turn out to be a strength.