Description
Temporarily out of stock
Title: Rabbit Problem, The
Author: GRAVETT EMILY
Format: HARDCOVER
Publication date: 01/10/2009
Imprint: SIMON & SCHUSTER
Price: $40.00
Publishing status: Active
Publisher Marketing:
How does 1+1 = 288? A family of rabbits soon supplies the answer in this funny story! Hop along to Fibonacci’s Field and follow Lonely and Chalk Rabbit through a year as they try to cope with their fast expanding brood and handle a different seasonal challenge each month, from the cold of February to the wet of April and the heat of July. This extraordinary picture book is packed with gorgeous details and novelty elements including a baby rabbit record book, a carrot recipe book and a surprise pop-up ending.
Kirkus Reviews (10/15/2010):
In Gravett’s gifted hands, an old math problem springs to life—and more life and more life! Medieval mathematician Fibonacci’s \”rabbit problem,\” in which bunnies breed at a specified rate, provides the structure of this glorious faux–wall calendar that watches a rabbit community from January to December. The title phrase alters monthly to portray current conditions in Fibonacci’s Field—for example, rainy April is The Soggy Rabbit Problem. Gorgeous art uses watercolors, oil-based pencil and carrots. The bottom calendar pages feature notations (\”check babies for fleas\”—\”are fleas edible?\”) and beautiful, bountiful paper layerings, some with complex depicted overlaps, others physically real—a newspaper in July’s Bored Rabbit Problem and a cookbook for September’s Too Many Carrots Problem have mini-pages that turn. Readers needn’t care about the math of Fibonacci Numbers to love the hilarious, jam-packed visual details, many of which are playfully metatextual. In a magnificent pop-up climax, the rabbits gnaw a hole in December’s page and explode out of the teeming field. Endless fun to pore over for kids and math-minded or geeky adults. (Picture book. 4-9, Adult)
(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
Horn Book Magazine (01/01/2011):
The always inventive Gravett takes a look at Fibonacci’s mathematical rabbit problem, introduced (in simplified form) on the endpapers: ‘If a pair of baby rabbits are put into a field, how many pairs will there be: a) At the end of each month? b) After one year?’ The book is designed as a calendar, to be turned sideways, and can actually be hung on a wall — there are holes in each page and even in the covers. January starts with one lonely rabbit, who puts out a call for a friend. Soon this bunny and partner are expecting and birthing their first offspring. . .the first of many babies yet to arrive. Readers familiar with the Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. . .) will spot it on the sign in the rabbits’ field that changes each month (‘Fibonacci’s Field, Population 2 pairs’), but most readers will be busy enjoying the clever, droll, layered ephemera, watercolors, collage, and mini-books. Each calendar page contains the kind of details we have come to expect from Gravett: a birth announcement with an ultrasound of twins, a list of possible baby names, a ration book, a pamphlet of carrot recipes, and a complete newspaper. Repeated readings are a must here — there is just so much to see and, in the case of the overweight rabbits, so many exercises to try. The November collection of eighty-nine pairs of rabbits strains the confines of the calendar, and the final page turn, following December, features an explosion (in pop-up form) of rabbits after one has gnawed its way out of the field. Absolutely splendid for bunnies of any age and the math-curious. ROBIN L. SMITH(Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
Publishers Weekly (10/18/2010):
Whimsical ideas proliferate as fast as rabbits in Gravett’s splendid sendup of Fibonacci’s query: \”If a pair of baby rabbits are put into a field, how many pairs will there be: a) At the end of each month? b) After one year?\” The book opens like a calendar, complete with a hole to hang on a nail. Twelve spreads record the 12 trying months of the rabbits-in-the-field experiment, the upper page picturing, in muted colors, the beleaguered rabbits, the calendar below full of hastily scribbled notations (\”Check babies for fleas\”) and glued-in documents à la The Jolly Postman. In January (\”The Lonely Rabbit Problem\”), two rabbits meet; by March (\”The Baby!!! Rabbit Problem\”) they’re recording data in a pamphlet called \”Bunny’s First Month,\” complete with sonogram; May includes a ration book to deal with a carrot shortage, and by November–well, readers won’t be able to see November, because it’s plastered over with rabbits. The only drawback to Gravett’s delicious creation is that the moving parts and magnificent final pop-up are likely to fall prey to small hands. Solution: purchase a duplicate. Ages 48. (Nov.) Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
School Library Journal (12/01/2010):
Gr 1–5—If a pair of rabbits is put together under certain conditions (\”NO Rabbits may leave the field\”), how many will there be in one year? This puzzle, posed by Fibonacci in the 13th-century, is the premise for Gravett’s latest work. The cover depicts a bemused rabbit calculating at a blackboard. The endpapers cast a wider view, with more of the problem shown visually and verbally. Readers follow a rabbit through an underground tunnel (title page) and emerge from a die-cut hole into a field—at the top of a calendar. As always, Gravett’s design choices are perfect for enhancing the narrative. Now viewers turn the book lengthwise and watch the effects of the ever-multiplying bunnies in watercolor scenes on the top, while the hand-lettered notes and novelty items glued to the dates below reveal seasonal challenges. In March, while the stressed parents learn infant care, a baby book showcases a tiny ultrasound of the twins. July depicts bored bunnies watching carrots grow. A miniature newspaper (\”The Fibber\”) includes biographical information on the famous mathematician, personals, birth announcements, graphs, and horoscopes. Under an empty, snow-covered field and through the die-cut hole that follows December 31, a peek and a page turn reveal the population explosion leaping, literally, off the page in a sturdy pop-up spread. This hilarious (and accurate) tale can be enjoyed by the numerically challenged and gifted alike.—\”Wendy Lukehart, Washington DC Public Library\” Copyright 2010 Reed Business Information.
Hornbook Guide to Children (01/01/2011):
In this book designed as a calendar, Gravett looks at Fibonacci’s mathematical rabbit problem, introduced on the endpapers. January starts with one lonely rabbit seeking a friend. Soon this bunny and partner are expecting their first–of many–offspring. Readers will enjoy the volumes droll layered ephemera, watercolors, collage, and mini-books. Repeated readings are a must here–theres just so much to see. (Copyright 2011 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)
BookPage (11/01/2010):
The breeding habits of hares and the numerical sequencing of a 13th-century mathematician are not the usual substance of children’s books, but British author-illustrator Emily Gravett ties the two together masterfully in The Rabbit Problem.
The tale begins in January with Lonely Rabbit and a hand-lettered invitation to join him in friendship in Fibonacci’s Field. A female rabbit named Chalk takes him up on the offer. It’s not long before the two are the proud parents of Alfalfa and Angora. Rabbits mature quickly, however, and by the end of March, their new offspring are pronounced \”All grown up.\” Two pairs become three. By the month of May, the field boasts five pairs and counting. Rain, heat, famine and glut-there isn’t anything that the ever-growing rabbit population doesn’t encounter. Each page brings mounting excitement until a climactic end draws the story to a paper-popping surprise.
Cleverly constructed with each two-page spread displayed as a month-by-month calendar, The Rabbit Problem delights with a host of paper enhancements including a pop-up baby announcement, carrot cookbook and a local newspaper. Multimedia illustrations incorporate crayon, pencil, watercolor, folded paper and a knitted bunny hoodie. The book is packed with so many \”extras\” that readers will happily return again and again to re-examine the minute illustrative detail and notations on each calendar page. Young readers will find the story to be a visual feast, and adults will appreciate the subtle humor often aimed at the travails of child rearing.
Look carefully at the illustrations and you will see that The Rabbit Problem offers a solution to Fibonacci’s age-old puzzle. However, one need not understand the complexity of mathematical musings, or even the details of rabbit reproduction, to realize that one rabbit plus one rabbit equals a whole lot of fun. COPYRIGHT(2010) BookPage, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
ISBN: 9781442412552
Pages: 32