For example, in the opening scene of Evan noticing the canary on his way home from school, Speidel does an appealing character sketch, almost without background details. In contrast, the Grossman illustration is full of urban neighborhood detail. Clearly Grossman saw her role as extending and expanding on the text, giving us a richness of urban detail. Speidel s pictures eliminate any chance for misinterpretation. While Grossman s picture of Evan at school shows a Caucasian teacher, Speidel chose not to illustrate that scene, providing instead a cityscape, with the people rendered far away and with indistinct features.
Mother tells a story, and little rabbit asks many questions, all answered reassuringly.
The recurring line, Just like me, encourages young listeners to join in. It s a measure of the enduring quality of Schlein s text that it needed almost no changes to be reborn in its current edition. There are some minor comma changes, and a deletion of two words in one place, but these are unimportant. Clearly here was a text that deserved to be republished, for unfortunately the earlier Sherman illustrations have aged poorly. Using shades of blue and green, tied together with a dark brown line, Sherman did sketchy illustrations with only a minimal amount of detail.