A Bunny for All Seasons
For Jasper—J.S.
For my mother and father—M.S.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Text copyright © 2003 by Janet Schulman
Illustrations copyright © 2003 by Meilo So
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York. KNOPF, BORZOI BOOKS, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Schulman, Janet.
A bunny for all seasons / by Janet Schulman ; illustrated by Meilo So.— 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: A little brown bunny enjoys visiting a garden from summer to spring, especially when a gray bunny shares the fun.
ISBN 978-0-375-82256-8 (trade) — ISBN 978-0-375-92256-5 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN: 978-0-375-98373-3 (ebook)
[1. Rabbits—Fiction. 2. Seasons—Fiction.] I. So, Meilo, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.S3866 Bu 2003
[E]—dc21
v3.1
Title Page
Copyright
First Page
About the Author and Illustrator
One hot summer day a little brown bunny rabbit hopped out of the woods and into a garden.
Her nose quivered and sniffed. She smelled so many things to eat, she hardly knew where to start.
The carrot tops were very good, the lettuce even better, and the strawberries, oh, they were something special.
The bunny ate and ate until she could eat no more.
Then she sniffed and hopped to the part of the garden with all the pretty flowers. What a wonderful garden someone has made just for me, she thought.
Every day that summer the bunny visited the garden. The yellow beans were a treat. She wasn’t so sure about the big red tomatoes.
Some days an old cat would chase her, but she was always faster.
In the fall the days got cooler and shorter, but there were still cabbages and parsnip tops and radishes, all very tasty.
The bunny had grown bigger and now her fur was getting thicker.
More leaves fell every day. There wasn’t much left in the garden besides the big orange pumpkins.
She couldn’t eat them, but they were very good to hide behind when the cat came slinking by.
Then early one morning she found a surprise by the tool shed. It was another bunny, a gray bunny.
The two bunnies sniffed and hopped until their noses touched.
The brown bunny was so happy. She had found a friend.
Winter came. The wind howled. The snow fell.
The two bunnies snuggled up together in their burrow in the woods. All they had to eat was bark from the smallest trees.
One moonlit night the two bunnies went to the garden.
They hopped and danced and played chase on the snow-covered lawn around the garden, just for the fun of it.
On the first warm day of spring, the brown bunny went to the garden. She sampled the green shoot popping up around the crocuses. Then she bit off the tenderest ones, made sure the cat was sound asleep, and hopped back to her burrow.
In a little while the brown bunny returned. The gray bunny came too. And guess what came with them?
Their three new little bunnies!
All spring long the baby bunnies ate delicious daffodil and tulip leaves under the watchful eyes of daddy and mommy bunny.
Could it ever get better? Oh, yes, just wait until summer, their mommy promised. And so it was.
has worked in children’s book publishing for over forty years. She and Meilo So also collaborated on Countdown to Spring. She is the anthologist of The 20th-Century Children’s Book Treasury and You Read to Me and I’ll Read to You. She lives in New York City.
is the illustrator of such award-winning books as Tasty Baby Belly Buttons by Judy Sierra; It’s Simple, Said Simon by Mary Ann Hoberman; and two poetry anthologies selected by Jack Prelutsky, The Beauty of the Beast and The 20th-Century Children’s Poetry Treasury. She was born in Hong Kong and now lives in the Shetland Islands.
www.randomhouse.com/kids
Janet Schulman, A Bunny for All Seasons
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