Review by Booklist Review
Did you think it was all playing cards and croquet in Alice's Wonderland? Mrs. White Rabbit confides the other side of the story to her diary, and she has a lot to put up with. Not only does her cottontail husband have to work late at the palace but she has to deal with a large family, a transparent cat, and a strange girl visitor with an unpleasant tendency to change size. The book's large format allows Bachelet's exuberantly imagined illustrations plenty of room for clever details and sly jokes that play out for a wide range of age levels. Readers will find a visual treat to linger over, with an abundance of Alice references, and though some are obscure, many need only basic familiarity with the Carroll classics to grasp. It is impossible not to gasp at several page turns that reveal richly hued, extravagantly detailed double-page spreads. A standout from a cookbook titled 100 Ways to Cook Carrots is so intricate it almost requires a magnifying glass and it's also strangely sad, as Mrs. White's daughter, desperate to lose weight, won't eat. This affectionate twist will intrigue Carroll fans and perhaps create new ones.--Rutan, Lynn Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
When Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit is busy racing around Wonderland, he leaves behind a harried wife and several demanding kids-at least according to Bachelet's diary-style portrait of a not-so-happy family. Mrs. Rabbit doesn't hold back in describing her frustrations with her husband's obliviousness and frequent absences ("Sometimes I dream about how sweet it would be to share some simple, happy moments together") or her concerns about her children: Beatrix, an aspiring supermodel, "spends all her time on the scale and refuses to swallow a single bite," while twins Gilbert and George are shown shooting marbles with their own pellets. Bachelet (My Cat, the Silliest Cat in the World) stuffs the pages with Easter eggs for Alice fans to enjoy: the Caterpillar smokes his hookah outdoors in a street scene (his wife, in curlers, glares at him from an upstairs window), Alice herself pops up occasionally, and playing cards and dodos are everywhere. Bachelet's careful, detailed artwork delights (a spread of 100 carrot-themed dishes is a showstopper) but this is among the gloomiest marriages to grace the pages of a picture book in some time. Ages 6-10. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
The wife of a certain always-late rabbit is not pleased with her domestic situation.Scowling ferociously throughout at her oblivious mate for charging off and leaving her to run a busy household, Mrs. Rabbit introduces the offspringfrom eldest daughter Beatrix, currently set upon becoming a supermodel, to baby Emily, "the spitting image of her father: she bawls the whole blessed day"while fulminating about certain unwelcome guests like the girl who keeps changing size. Her diary entries accompany a set of magnificent, extravagantly busy scenes festooned with exactly drawn bric-a-brac, visual jokes, and Carrollian characters. Artistic tours de force like the 100 (!) different carrot dishes, each one labeled, that Mrs. Rabbit offers weight-obsessed Beatrix and a classroom stocked with familiar figures from the Dodo to Tweedledee and Tweedledum make delightful poring-over. Some of the humor takes satiric or ribald turns ("My little Eliot sometimes seems to be quite advanced for his age," Mrs. Rabbit notes, rushing in to stop the tyke from peeking under a doll's dress), broadening the audience and offering chuckles to adult readers. All of the lagomorphs except teacher Mrs. Hare are, like the few human characters in the rest of the cast, white. Mr. White Rabbit may be about to become "late" in more ways than one. (Picture book. 6-12, adult) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
