My Friend Rabbit

My Friend Rabbit, written and illustrated by Eric Rohmann, is an excellent picture book. Mouse lets his best friend Rabbit play with his new toy airplane. Trouble soon follows when Rabbit gets the plane stuck in a tree. Rabbit tries to get the help of all the other animals, but they are soon frustrated with him. The plane is finally knocked loose of the tree only for Rabbit to fly it into the tree again. The story ends with Rabbit claiming he has another idea. I would use this book as a read aloud to the class when talking about friendships. In friendships, people often mean well, but there will always be accidents. As Mouse does in the story, students must learn not to get angry with their friends over accidents. I would also give this as independent reading for low-level readers because the text is fairly simple and the vivid illustrations correspond to the text. There are also several pages without any words at all. I think that pages like this are a great opportunity to practice predicting events in a story, and they allow children to feel like they have some control over what is happening in the book.