Rabbit Hill

“Rabbit Hill” by Robert Lawson 1945 Newberry Winner
This is a book about a community of animals living on a plot of land and how "new folks" were going to be moving into the "big house". I actually thought it might be going in a bad direction when they started talking about the “big house” but fortunately it didn’t.
And honestly I felt like the first half of the book should have been the first quarter of the book, it was very, very repetitive, so much so it was a bit boring, and I wondered if the story was ever going to go anywhere. The second half of the book, once the new people finally moved in went relatively quickly and finally there was a bit of adventure. The moral of the story was sweet and was all about how people and animals can live together in harmony if you just give them a chance and you should treat the animals as friends not as pests. Not a realistic way to look at rabbits and moles and such that ravage ones gardens, but it was a nice sentiment. Its too bad that welcoming them into your garden doesn't make your crops grow better. And I say this as someone who has had a garden and had to put a cage over the carrots if I wanted any. However I am not one to chase the little animals away so its fairly common for me to lose part of my crop. I will say though if you do have plenty of sapling that you simply don't care about and let grow wherever they please without mowing them down the deer seem to like them better than corn, but that is just my experience.
Of course maybe the moral of the book wasn't actually about the animals but rather welcoming all people in your community. in which case I am all for it.

Does someone die? They sure talked about it a lot, but it was all past tense, so sort of.