Little Rabbit Books: A Picture Book Series Review

Concept books introduce very young children to colors, shapes, numbers, sizes, letters, and other basic concepts. The Little Rabbit series does it with style!

Alan Baker's Little Rabbit seriesAlan Baker's Little Rabbit series

It is surprisingly difficult to make a book about colors or shapes feel like a book.

Concept books introduce very young children to colors, shapes, numbers, sizes, letters, and other basic concepts. Often they are little more than illustrated flash cards: Red apple. Blue ball. Three bears. Letter A. Useful of course, but not necessarily the sort of book a child wants to hear again and again. Certainly not the sort of book a parent wants to have to read again and again.

Alan Baker’s Little Rabbit books take familiar early-learning concepts and tuck them inside simple, quiet stories. The rabbits don’t lecture or explain; in fact, they don’t speak. They simply go about their little rabbit lives, and along the way, children encounter shapes, colors, numbers, letters, sorting, and time. The result is books that teach without feeling like lessons and that are genuinely lovely to read.

Learning Without Being Taught

My children loved the Little Rabbit books, and they were books I never tired of reading aloud. As parents we know that is not a trivial thing. Kids want their favorites read and reread, and too many of them are tolerable to adults only because we know the kids love them. Baker’s books are the rarer kind that an adult can actually enjoy, too.

The illustrations are beautiful and uncluttered, and the little rabbits have an appealing, almost old-fashioned charm. Without being imitative of Beatrix Potter’s books, they contain the same peaceful feeling: small animals having small adventures in a safe, natural, lovely world.

The books also respect their audience, giving toddlers and preschoolers a full story with fully realized characters … in a counting book.

The pacing respects the attention span of a very young listener without constantly trying to grab it. There are no cartoonish characters explaining what is happening, no frantic attempts to keep a toddler’s attention, and no sense that the child must be entertained every second. Instead, the rabbits get on with their business, and the child gets to watch. That quietness is a big part of the books’ charm.

Brown Rabbit’s Shape Book

Brown Rabbit’s Shape Book was my family’s first Little Rabbit book, and it remains one of my favorites.

Instead of presenting a page of circles, squares, triangles, and rectangles for the child to identify, Baker incorporates shapes naturally into Rabbit’s surroundings and activities. The shapes become part of a story rather than a vocabulary exercise.

At the end, Rabbit has been tidying up his things and falls asleep on top of a pile of objects—including one rather appropriately rabbit-shaped Rabbit. It’s a wonderfully simple idea, but that’s exactly the point. The child is learning to recognize shapes while following Rabbit through his day.

Black and White Rabbit’s ABC

Alphabet books are another category in which Baker resists the obvious and easy—and boring—route: A is for apple, B is for ball, C is for cat.

Black and White Rabbit’s ABC turns the alphabet into a story. The letters and words move the narrative along, so the book doesn’t feel like a collection of unrelated examples. By the time Rabbit reaches the end of the alphabet, he has had a full day’s worth of activity and is ready for bed.

“Y is for yawning. What a hard day’s work!
“Z is for zzzzz. Rabbit’s fast asleep.”

The alphabet is the structure of the story.

Gray Rabbit’s Odd One Out

Gray Rabbit’s Odd One Out tackles sorting, another concept that could be presented about as excitingly as a pile of white socks.

Baker makes it part of Rabbit’s ordinary activities as he sorts things into groups, notices what doesn’t belong, and gets his surroundings organized before settling down with his favorite book.

There is even a little fan service for parents here. Many of the Little Rabbit books involve Rabbit tidying up, but tidying is the entire focus of this story. As a parent, I am certainly not going to complain about a toddler book in which the protagonist puts things away!

White Rabbit’s Color Book

White Rabbit’s Color Book takes a more mischievous (and messy) approach.

Rabbit encounters colors in the course of getting increasingly dirty, giving the book more personality than the standard “this is red; this is yellow; this is blue” approach. The colors are encountered, combined, and transformed as Rabbit’s adventure unfolds.

At one point, red, yellow, and blue become brown:

“Hooray! Lovely warm brown. Blue, yellow, and red together make brown. And brown’s just right for me.”

It’s a particularly nice example of Baker’s method. The child isn’t merely memorizing color names. The colors are doing something.

Gray Rabbit’s 1, 2, 3 Number Book

Gray Rabbit’s 1, 2, 3 gives counting a similarly creative treatment. The numbers are built into Rabbit’s day. The child follows along, counting as the story progresses, until there is only one weary Rabbit left at the end.

It’s a small story, but that’s enough. For a very young child, following one character through a sequence of events is far more engaging than being presented with a page of disconnected numerals and objects.

Brown Rabbit’s Day

Brown Rabbit’s Day introduces the concept of time by following Rabbit through the ordinary events of a day.

There is nothing particularly dramatic about Rabbit’s schedule—and that’s precisely why it works. Young children are learning about time through their own routines: morning, meals, play, afternoon, bedtime. Baker gives those familiar experiences a gentle narrative structure.

Rabbit even spends some time waiting for Jell-O to set.

“He kept testing the Jell-O to see if it was ready. Hurry up, Jell-O! he thought.”

It is difficult to imagine a more toddler-appropriate lesson in the concept of time than waiting impatiently for dessert.

Books That Trust Young Children

What I particularly appreciate about the Little Rabbit books is that they never seem embarrassed by being books for very young children. They are simple without being simplistic. Baker refuses to strip away everything that makes a picture book a picture book merely because the reader is three years old.

The stories are small because the intended audience is small, not because Baker has run out of ideas. The illustrations are attractive enough to invite lingering over, and the concepts are presented clearly without turning the books into worksheets in disguise. The best learning happens when the child is absorbed in something else and new information is just folded in naturally.

A toddler following Rabbit around is noticing colors without being told to notice them. A child enjoying the alphabet story is encountering letters and vocabulary. And when Rabbit sorts his things, the child gets to sort along with him. Rabbit is never required to stop and announce, “Now we are going to learn about sorting!”

That’s a much more natural way to learn—and a much more natural way to make a book feel like a book.

The Little Rabbit books are especially good for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers, whether you’re looking for a first concept book or simply a lovely read-aloud to share with a young child. If you need a gift for a toddler in your life, Alan Baker’s quiet little rabbits are a real treat.

They teach shapes, numbers, colors, letters, and more. More importantly, they give children something worth learning from in the first place: a good story.

About Alan Baker: British author and illustrator Alan Baker (b. 1951) has written and illustrated more than 40 books, including the popular Little Rabbit series, with titles in the entire series. He has also illustrated works by other authors, including The Odyssey and The Story of King Arthur, and has won several illustration awards. He was formerly a lecturer in illustration at the University of Brighton.

Alan Baker's Little Rabbit seriesAlan Baker's Little Rabbit series

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