| From
the March/April 1997 issue of The Horn Book Magazine
Snapshot
“Have a carrot”
By Cynthia Voigt
don’t know that my children would agree — and I am not
consulting them to find out — but high on the list of favorite
read-aloud books in the house where I was the Mommy is The Runaway
Bunny. As a mother, as a pillow to the warm small nestling
body, as reader aloud and silent, that book satisfied. The rhythmic
prose, the colorful illustrations, the balanced structure of the
story, all of those contributed to our pleasure. For myself, also,
there was the thought-provoking content of the book — the
mother bunny who was so reassuringly always present, or was it smotheringly
always present? or merely inescapably? Was I oversensitive to feel
a kind of chill when I read the mother bunny’s promise, “I
will be the wind and I will blow you where I want you to go”?
Was I over-identifying with the child beside me in her/his longing
to escape that overflowing, overwhelming Mother? The question the
book raises is: What about love?
There are no answers offered, unless in the final
line of the story, after the little bunny has remarked, “Shucks.
I might as well stay here and be your little bunny.” The mother
responds — lovingly, patiently, wisely, victoriously, smugly,
above all enigmatically: “Have a carrot.”
Have a carrot, I say to my children, and they understand
everything I mean. I mean, everything, including love. Whatever
else it might have meant, to our children, to their parents, that
line constitutes a family chord. It plays us together, and that
is one of the answers about love, isn’t it?
|
