Sophie Sleeps Over
by Marisabina Russo; 
illus. by the author
Primary    Porter/Roaring Brook    32 pp.
3/14    978-1-59643-933-7    $16.99    g

Sophie and Olive are BBFFs (best bunny friends forever). When Olive announces a sleepover birthday party, Sophie is excited to go (“‘Sleepover parties are my favorite kind,’ said Sophie, even though she had never been to one”). She packs her overnight bag, puts on her tiara, and heads over to Olive’s. She gets a rude awakening, though, when she knocks on Olive’s front door and it’s opened by Penelope, who purports to be “‘Olive’s best friend.’ ‘No, I’m her best friend,’ said Sophie, but all of a sudden she wasn’t so sure.” During the party Penelope undercuts her at every turn (“You could just keep score,” Penelope suggests during ping-pong), and things come to a head over Sophie’s best-friend birthday gift to Olive. After lights-out, though, the competing bunny girls reach détente over their inability to sleep and missing their favorite dolls, paving the way for a new three-way best-friendship. Russo knows her way around drawing rabbit-children (The Bunnies Are Not in Their Beds; A Very Big Bunny, rev. 1/10), and in her tidy gouache illustrations these three bunnies, dressed in their birthday party best, display clear emotions that will be immediately recognizable to young readers and listeners. Friendship bliss, anticipation, hurt feelings, homesickness — all are familiar to (human) kids and are all conveyed with respect and sensitivity.

From the March/April 2014 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.