Are You the Easter Bunny?

Are You the Easter Bunny? by Janeen Brian, illustrated by Lucinda Gifford (Angus & Robertson) HB ISBN 9781460765494

Reviewed by Dianne Bates

Bilbies, which not many know, are one of Australia’s most important and endangered animals. 

In this joyful picture book, an Australian author and illustrator show the animal in its natural habitat, the desert.

Numerous children's books have been written about the Easter bilby, but this picture book, ideal for readers aged 4 to 7, turns that idea on its head. This bilby replies to a small red bird that asks if it’s the Easter bunny. It explains its world: how it digs holes that shelter it from the heat, how it listens, sniffs, and feels for its food, how it uses its’ whiskery sniffer-snout’  to find seeds and grubs, and how it uses its ‘tall pink straight ups’ (its ears) to listen.

Ideal for carers and teachers to read aloud, this text in strong, rhyming verse, uses rich language such as ‘four scritcher-scratchers’ and 'a long, slim bottom wriggler’ which will surely elicit giggles from young children.

The illustrations make good use of white space and reds and greys, showing the bilby in its environment.

By the book’s end, the reader will be assured that a bilby is not an Easter ‘bunny’, but an animal that is Australian. It concludes with the words, ‘I’m a bilby, hip hooray! But I think it’s grand to help the lands. And I hope I’m here to stay.