09 August 2017 by Christina Barker
Title: Jade Rabbit (Stories of animal sign series)
Author: Xue Lin
Reviewer: Christina Barker
On the front cover, Jade Rabbit is mixing some herbs whist dressed in one of her costumes. She is sitting peacefully beneath the tree on the moon.
I like that a lot of the animals are playing happily together at the beginning. It gives a sense of friendship and children can relate to it like the animals are their friends. I also liked that they all chose to help the man instead of leaving him to fend for himself. This teaches children a valuable lesson about being kind. Jade Rabbit did a very selfless act which I was very shocked about.
I liked to imagine what the moon palace would really look like. Although there are pictures in the book I had a very different picture in my imagination. I imagined a huge palace on its own almost made out of moon rock where the light from the sun reflected on it. It was surrounded by a huge garden in which Jade Rabbit collects all the herbs from each day. It’s a very beautiful palace and always kept perfect.
I think it’s interesting that Jade Rabbit decided to wear costumes. Why couldn’t she just be a normal rabbit? She was bound to get noticed after a while with her big ears sticking out of each one!
Jade rabbit is extremely kind and helpful. I liked her a lot. I preferred this book a little more than some of the others.
Reviewer: Taylor Brooker
One thing I really love in this book is the detailing in the clothing on each page, particularly the Moon Lady’s dress. I find traditional clothes from other cultures really interesting, so to see it illustrated in such detail is amazing. I think the children at our local school Mandarin club also enjoyed seeing the traditional clothes and dressing paper doll Jade Rabbit up!
Similar to Big Red Rooster, the brightness changes with the story. The first few pages have an earthy colour palette and are mostly one tone, but as the story progresses and rabbit becomes Jade Rabbit and begins making people happy, the pages get brighter and more colourful, which represents the difference she’s making to people’s lives.
As with each of the animal zodiac stories, the book is fun but also contains a moral, teaching kindness and selflessness to children in subtle ways. Each story is a legend, usually meaning something out of the ordinary happens, which might seem unbelievable, but the messages and morals get through to us sometimes even better than if the story was factual and preached these morals. I think this is probably because fictional stories and legends seem to stick with us more than real life stories because they’re so different to ordinary life.
