This book is part of a Ready to Read series that Jason Tharp writes and illustrates. All of these books use color coded speech bubbles to convey the character’s dialogue. This is great for emerging readers. As a Level 1 book, this book has mostly short sentences and easy to sound out words. In this book Bunny will not jump, despite him being a bunny and Big (a bear) giving it his all to persuade Bunny to jump. As the story moves along, Big and Bunny discover it is their differences that make Bunny not feel like jumping. Once they acknowledge they are different and that their differences give them different capabilities, they talk about its not what it looks like when you do it, it is whether or not you are having fun while doing it. This is a great message for kids!
One of the best things about Jason Tharp’s books is that he involves the reader. Children love that Big can SEE them and asks them to push buttons or shake the book to help the story move along. Despite this, this book is not one of my favorites in the collection. There are less interactive pieces to it and although I love the message, a bunny just refusing to jump is not as funny as the other books. Having said that, there is no doubt that kids will enjoy this book, especially if they know the characters from previous ones.