The rescue rabbits by Eric Seltzer, illustrated by Roland Garrigue

 Seltzer, author of the popular and silly easy readers Sea cows, Space cows, and Party pigs, pairs up with a new collaborator for an even sillier story of rabbits rescuing animals in peril.

Ace, Chip, Dot, and Spot are the rescue rabbits. They are brown, yellow, white, and blue and wear clothes in a variety of styles and hues - but they all have a red and white rescue vest on! Readers are invited to join them in a day of rescues, from an elephant with a splinter to a kangaroo with a rash. But then they have their biggest rescue yet - the royal rhino family!

Prince Rhino Rex has got some serious troubles. He's got ants in his pants, chopsticks in his nose, and he's trapped in a tree! The Rescue Rabbits, having just arrived home to their rescue rabbit headquarters (the buildings have, of course, ears) are on the case. It takes some last-minute repairs to the helicopter, an emergency lift for the rhino queen, and lots of hard work before they are able to save the prince!

Garrigue's art varies from spot art with speech bubbles, to complete spreads showing wild antics like lifting an elephant with a bulldozer or searching the jungle for an animal in trouble. The animals tend to have large and very dark eyes, with bright, contrasting colors in clothes and landscape. Prince Rhino is a lumpy, grumpy, fussy child, while the queen bursts out of her dress, the helicopter, and the page. The bunnies' faces have little expression, maintaining a cheerfully bland smile for each throughout the story.

The pages are busy with words and pictures, showing action sequences, jungle scenes, and speech bubbles, with highlighted words in red, like the Rescue Rabbits Super-Truck Z100. A lumpy yellow snake wanders through the scenery, antlers and horns twist across the landscape, and fluffy clouds drift across the sky.

Verdict: This is a little long for a storytime and the detailed illustrations will be difficult in this age of virtual storytimes, but it's a fun choice for one-on-one reading or kids who enjoy perusing picture books on their own. For storytime I'd prefer Dormer's Firefighter Duckies, but this is an amusing addition, especially for readers who like silly stories.

ISBN: 9781542042635; Published November 2020 by Two Lions; Review copy provided by publisher; Donated to the library