Book: Six Saskatchewan Bunnies

Written and illustrated by Sharla Griffiths
Review by Michelle Shaw
$17.00 ISBN 9781999560003

It’s always fun to read a book set in a familiar place, and children, especially, love reading about places they know and can actually visit. So Sharla Griffiths’ new children book is a delight. It’s an entertaining invitation to explore the joys of summer in Saskatchewan along with six little bunnies.

The bunnies hop their way through the province, climbing the branches of the Crooked Trees, sliding down the sand dunes at Athabasca Provincial Park and feeding the geese at Wascana Park in Regina. They crawl through the tunnels in Moose Jaw, paint rocks along the riverbank on the Meewasin Trail in Saskatoon, discover the skeleton of a T-Rex in Eastend and lie back in the waving prairie grass, watching the clouds drift across Saskatchewan’s endless sky in Grasslands National Park.

The book features 24 full page color illustrations that are interesting and fun. Each destination is helpfully labelled at the bottom of the page and there’s a map of the province at the end of the book showing where the bunnies (and the reader) have travelled.

Griffiths also introduces the concept of counting. The story starts off with six bunnies and slowly, one by one, the bunnies drift off to explore something new and exciting. Finally, there is only one bunny left and she skips along home… to climb into bed “with a gigantic smile” and drift off to sleep along with the other five bunnies.

I loved Griffiths’ attention to detail. One of the bunnies lands up in a gift shop in Moose Jaw next to a T-shirt that reads Moose Jaw Tunnels est 1908. Another ends up at the T-Rex Discovery Centre gaping at a dinosaur skeleton while standing in front of a stand that says Scotty (the name given to the T-Rex skeleton discovered in Eastend in 1991).

Reading Six Saskatchewan Bunnies with your children will give you lots of fun ideas for planning future family adventures -- which could be just the thing to bring a smile to your face when you’re knee-deep in snow!

The book is available in paperback.

Sharla Griffiths is a Saskatchewan artist with two kids and a love for reading, learning, and Canada. This is her first book.

THIS BOOK IS AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE OR FROM WWW.SKBOOKS.COM