School Library Journal Review
K-Gr 2-An elderly aunt comes to stay with a family of anthropomorphized bunnies when she can no longer take care of herself. Aunt Fanny's playful ways, generosity, and storytelling quickly endear her to the bunny children, despite the challenges to the household caused by her arrival. As they spend her last days together, she gently prepares little bunnies for her inevitable departure by pointing out the stars and telling them she will go there some day. "At some point, each of us must go elsewhere-to that place where we were before we were born. It is where we return when we die" she says. When she finally passes, the bunny family members grieve but console themselves in knowing that though Aunt Fanny left her "tired old body" behind, she's somewhere else "having fun and telling her stories." Oral's gentle illustrations have an almost vintage feel to them, part-Beatrix Potter, part-Grandma Moses. Though a touch juvenile for the text-heavy story and its stark subject matter in their quaint playful style, they manage to soften and lighten the tone while expressively depicting poignant heart-wrenching moments such as the bunnies grieving for their aunt or departing her funeral on a starlit night. VERDICT A touching, if somewhat overlong story that deals with its tough subject in an honest yet comforting manner; a solid addition to the death and grieving sections of most collections.-Yelena Alekseyeva-Popova, formerly at Chappaqua Library, NY © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
An elder relative leaves memories and mementos with three young bunnies. Signaling its theme with its subtitle, the tale begins with the arrival of Great Aunt Fanny to the Bunny household, where she takes over a bedroom but proves to be an easy new addition, being a playful soul with "more silliness in her head than the three little bunnies put together." (Pleasantly, all of the grown-ups seem to accept the new family arrangement as a matter of course.) Every night she takes Lisa, Linda, and Tony out to the porch to wave at the stars and watch them twinkle back. She also teaches them how to make daisy crowns and willow whistles, shares small treasures from her chest of drawers, and warns that sooner or later she'll be going "to that place where we were before we were born." And so it is, when one day she doesn't wake up, that everyone gathers amid tears to bury her reverently in the woods. Afterward the children, thinking of where she has gone, wave at the stars and watch them twinkle back. Oral echoes the episode's gentle, low-key tone with scenes of fuzzy anthropomorphic rabbits in cozy country dress and surroundings. A gentle preview of mortality for young ones, softening but not disguising the prospect and arrival of loss. (Picture book. 6-8) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.