Shelly's Book Blog

Rabbit Hill, by Robert Lawson, won the Newbery Medal in 1945. This is a very sweet book about a group of small animals who live near a rural house that has been abandoned for some time. There are rabbits, a skunk named Phewie, mice, a mole, a fox, and a woodchuck, and they have all been going through hard times because there has been no food from the garden, nor any garbage from the human home to scavenge. When they hear that a new family is due to move into the house, the animals hope that they will be "planting folk" so that the food supply on the hill will increase.

Although I did like the story, I have a few complaints. First of all, the animals are too heavily anthropomorphized, and unfortunately their characterizations reflect the sexist and racist attitudes of the 1940's. For example, in the animals' world, the "women folk" cook and clean and weep easily, bachelors are naturally slovenly, and all heavy-set black women are excellent cooks. Furthermore, the lessons of the story could have been communicated with a lighter touch. The new family, which consists of a man, a woman, and their old, lazy cat, are so very good and kind to the animals, and their neighbors are so very ignorant (one of them opined that reading books rots the mind). A few more shades of gray would have been welcome.

Still, lots of kids like to read about animals, especially the fuzzy, cuddly kind featured in this story. Also, I found the vocabulary and sytax used in the book to be quite sophisticated, but not so advanced that it would prevent children from understaning the story. I like to see kids exposed to new words and elegant ways of putting those words together, and this book does exactly that, especially in the speech of Father Rabbit, who has the manners and speech patterns of an old-fashioned Southern gentleman.