Synopsis: Trixie can’t wait to show off her special Knuffle Bunny at school, but she’s horrified to find that another child has the same toy. Arguments ensue, and the children accidentally take the wrong bunnies home. A desperate night-time mission through the streets of New York sets things straight, and culminates in a new friendship.

Review: This humorous sequel to the award-winning ‘Knuffle Bunny’ will amuse adults and children alike, but would be particularly good to share with young children who are beginning to socialize independently. It has a look reminiscent of the studio scenes in TV’s ‘Sesame Street’, for which Willems has won many screen-writing awards.

The characters inhabit a very normal-looking world, from which they stand out because of their bright colours and cartoon-style appearance. Trixie even has large, round, Muppet-like eyes, which give her an innocently fanatical expression. Willems plays up the filmic qualities of the picturebook, depicting series of sequential images on many spreads, including one striking set of jump cuts, zooming in on the second Knuffle Bunny. One can almost hear the sharp violin chords that might accompany Trixie’s dramatic realisation that her beloved toy is not unique. Even the ‘too’ of the title is a parody of so many film sequels (e.g. ‘Jaws 2’), and the use of black and white photos of real places in New York as a backdrop, makes each illustration look like a still from a movie.

 If the film parody may be a little sophisticated for some young readers to appreciate, the book entertains on several other levels. Whilst there are many details to observe and discuss in the illustrations, the text is fairly short and often understated, as when the narrator explains: ‘By now Trixie really knew how to talk.’ This is significant to anyone familiar with toddler Trixie’s frustrations in the first Knuffle Bunny book, and in fact the illustration shows Trixie’s speech bubble as so big as to threaten to cover Dad’s face, forcing him to peer out at us from beneath it. Like the best of picture book artists, Willems exploits a mismatch between what the pictures show and what the words tell, to great comic effect.

Apart from offering high entertainment value, this book is useful for its subtle moral about empathy. Trixie’s parents plainly adore her and go to some lengths to make her happy. By the end of the book, Trixie realises that another child can experience the same worries and joys that she does, and this new awareness of the feelings of others enables her to make her first real friend.

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2008-07-01