The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

 

Taylor is playing with blocks. Taylor builds an amazing tower - tall and wide. It is fabulous but just at that moment a flock of blackbirds swoop in and everything comes crashing down.

Others have advice - Chicken advises they should talk talk talk; Bear advises letting out the feelings with shouting anger; Elephant suggests remembering and rebuilding. The advice continues - laugh it off; pretend nothing happened; throw it all away; go knock down something else. 

"But Taylor didn't feel like doing anything with anybody. So eventually they all left ... until Taylor was alone. In the quiet, Taylor didn't even notice the rabbit. But it moved closer, and closer. Until Taylor could feel its warm body."

The rabbit listens and Taylor is able to talk through all the emotional responses to the block disaster eventually arriving at the decision to build it all again. The rabbit listens and comforts and allows Taylor to work through his grief and reach his own emotional peace.

Sensitive and insightful, this poignant story provides an ideal starting point for discussion about how it feels when things go wrong. BookTrust

Keeping the focus on the small tragedy of tumbled blocks makes it young-child–appropriate, with opportunities for deeper connections with an older audience. Kirkus Star

You can see the whole book here. After reading this book go back and look at the end papers where you can see the swooping blackbirds - swooping in at the beginning and swooping away at the end.

The emotional trajectory of this story is amazing especially when you consider this is a book written for a very young child although, like Elizabeth Bird in the SLJ, I think this is a book I would gift to an adult too. It should also be added to school and public library collections. Luckily this is not an expensive book and it is available in a paperback edition.