Starred Review After a terrifying encounter with a wolf, a small bunny ite with a blue tail and one yellow ear, the other lavender elters behind a green-leafed tree. This is no ordinary tree. It has watched the wolf attack the rabbit colony and forms its branches into a towering wolf's head to send the predator packing. Finally safe, Bunny asks it for help finding its now-scattered colony, bypassing the problem posed by roots by transplanting the tree into a small red wagon. Hopping aboard, the two set off on an adventure that takes them over land, sea, and air to find the other rabbits. The feel of this narrative is classic, but the presentation makes it new, wondrous even, as it is entirely wordless. Color-soaked, full-page illustrations comprise the entire book, filling it with watercoloresque skies, dramatic silhouettes, and boundless imagination. It subtly tips its hat to Harold and the Purple Crayon and The Runaway Bunny in the ways the duo creatively surmounts obstacles, typically by Tree taking on different shapes suggested by Bunny: a sailboat when met with water, an airplane when confronted with mountains. Zsako also folds in visual cues that speak to nature's life cycles, season changes, and symbiosis. Beyond that, the heartwarming friendship between Bunny and Tree is never once in doubt, and it will effortlessly gather readers into its embrace.

Gr 2–4 —A ravenous, red-eyed wolf ambushes a group of rabbits and chases after Bunny, a blue-tailed, white rabbit with one gray and one yellow ear. Bunny narrowly escapes the wolf's pursuit and finds protection from Tree, who spontaneously morphs into the head of a wolf, scaring the wolf away in defeat. Bunny gratefully wraps mismatched ears around Tree's trunk in a hug and the fast friends quickly focus on reuniting Bunny with the lost rabbits. Uprooting Tree, the pair embark on an odyssey mobilized by a small red wagon and Tree's enchanted ability to transform into various modes of transportation. When their journey delivers them to the peak of a tall mountain, Bunny shouts desperately for the missing rabbits. Hearing nothing but silence, Bunny weeps until a large bird soars in with a message of hope. Zsako's painterly dreamlike illustrations are gently colored and interspersed with white page breaks. A few illustrations depict black speech bubbles with simple, white pictographs conveying brief communication between characters. This lengthy, wordless picture book extends across nine acts followed by an epilogue and is saturated in complexity, making it most accessible to an older elementary school aged audience. VERDICT Sophisticated and imaginative, this unique, wordless picture book will captivate upper elementary readers.—Emily Brush

Cooperation, regeneration, and reunification conveyed wordlessly in nine acts.After a prologue chronicles Tree's germination and growth through four seasons, Act 1 introduces high drama. A hungry wolf threatens Bunny and eight multihued companions. Separated from the group, Bunny flees, pursued by the wolf. Tree shape-shifts, matching the wolf's menacing visage and scaring it off. Bunny is grateful, but pictograms in thought bubbles pinpoint the new issue: finding Bunny's missing mates. When Tree indicates that it's rooted to the ground, resourceful Bunny reappears with a wheeled cart, transplanting Tree into a pot for a classic quest. Responding to Bunny's pictograph cues, Tree morphs into a locomotive engine, sailboat, and airplane as the pair search. (Zsako's depictions of skies and weather are particularly mesmerizing.) Weeping atop a hill, Bunny encounters a bird who's spotted the bunnies near a twin-peaked mountain. Soon after Tree-as-airplane's landing, Bunny joyfully reunites with the colony. Though Tree manifests "eyes"-round voids in its foliage-Zsako avoids anthropomorphism, communicating emotions through body language, not physiognomy. The final acts in this handsomely bound, rich volume revel in the symbiosis among the rabbits, their poop, and Tree's newly replanted roots as its leaves nourish the hungry colony and they later spend winter burrowed beneath it. Wry visuals, like Tree's clear need for replanting, as well as color associations between rabbits, seeds, and newly emerging trees will intrigue both kids and grown-ups.A lush tale that's worthy of repeat perusals. (Picture book. 4-8)

Imaginative power and constant movement make this wordless debut picture book from artist Zsako a visual tour de force. After a wolf chases a band of scattering bunnies, one white rabbit with colorful ears is pursued as far as a tree, which responds by transmogrifying—its leafy silhouette duplicating the predator’s greedy snarl. Stunned and grateful when the wolf turns tail and runs, the bunny asks the tree for help finding its fellow rabbits. (The two communicate via droll, blackboard-style illustrated thought bubbles.) The bunny excavates the tree’s root system and packs it into a red cart, and the duo set off on an epic journey. Along the way, the tree obligingly remakes itself into new forms of transportation that suit the terrain—a train, a boat, an airplane—and a glad bunny reunion ushers in further discovery and transformation. Atmospheric backdrops create the sense of passing time as the journey hurtles onward. The page-turning tale mixes classic storytelling tropes—the ability to transform, a quest for lost loved ones, trees’ majesty—into a fanciful exploration of a world in which love leads to growth, and growth, in turn, to deeper love. Ages 7–up. (May)