Tonight is the first night of Passover, and we’ll be celebrating the holiday at my parents’ house with the traditional Seder. I’m looking forward to matzah ball soup, brisket, and even the gefilte fish (which I enjoy with a bit of horseradish)! 🙂 Happy Passover to all of my friends and family – and happy Easter to our friends and family who will be celebrating that holiday next week as well!

This will be Zachary’s second Passover. If you’d like to see what he looked like at the first one, just click here.

Easter time gives you the motherlode of bunny-related books at the bookstore. It is a treasure trove! Even though our family is Jewish, that doesn’t stop me from loving a good bunny book. “Bunny” has been a nickname in my family for a long time. My dad calls me bunny, and Adrian and I call Zachary our little bunny, too.

When I found out I was pregnant, I started collecting bunny books and now we have many. However… there are never enough. 🙂 Bunnies are just so cute and definitely make great characters in a book! Here are a few of our favorite bunny books – some new and old favorites!

In My Meadow by Sara Gillingham

The best thing about this book is that the little bunny in the center of the book is actually a finger puppet! As you turn the pages and read the story to your baby, you can wiggle your finger around in the finger puppet and if you’re successful (as I was), a little giggle will escape from your child’s mouth. This is such a sweet little gem of a book with beautiful bright colors and illustrations and nice hard board pages. You might also want to check out these other animal puppet books by the same author: In My Den (a little bear puppet) and In My Nest (a little owl puppet).

I am a Bunny by Ole Risom & Richard Scarry

I remember reading this book as a child. It’s interesting how things that you love as a child can become strongly imprinted on your soul… then you forget about them and one day they return to you and it’s almost shocking how well you remember them. That’s what happened with I am a Bunny. When I was pregnant, Adrian and I were at the bookstore one day and I was looking at the baby books when I came across this book. The cover looked familiar to me, but my love for this book didn’t hit me until I opened it up and began to read it. As I read the simple words, I almost felt transported back to my room as a little girl, reading this book. I felt a fullness and happiness in my heart as I finished the story standing there in the bookstore. I truly had loved this book as a child – maybe it was the story, the artwork – I don’t know. But I loved it. I immediately took it to the counter and purchased it. I read it frequently when Zachary was inside me, and I read it to him as much as I could when he was little. He’s not as interested in the book these days, but he’s picked it up a few times. I look forward to reading it together with him when he’s a little bigger, and I hope he loves it as much as I did when I was a little girl.

Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

I think nearly every parent these days owns this book or has been given a copy of this book as a gift. It is definitely a staple in every parent’s book collection. I first came across this book in college, when my similarly rabbit-obsessed best friend, Tamara, received the book and stuffed bunny gift set as a token from her then boyfriend, Brendan (they are now married). I thought that the book was quite possibly the sweetest thing I had ever seen – a curious young bunny rabbit demonstrating to his dad all the ways that he loved him. The daddy rabbit would then tell the little bunny all the ways that he loved him even more. It is such a sweet book, and so true, because now that I am a parent, I understand the depth of a parent’s love. It is a love that truly does go all the way “to the moon… and back.” A child will never understand how much their parents love them until the day they become parents themselves. I don’t read this book to Zachary as often as I used to, since he’s interested in so many other books lately, but for a long time this was his favorite book to hear. I used to read it over and over. I actually miss reading it to him, since it’s one of my favorites, so I think we’ll start that tradition up again soon.

I Spy Little Bunnies by Jean Marzollo

I absolutely love this book! The rhymes are so funny and it’s a book that can absolutely grow with your child, as are all the books in the I SPY series. When they are little, they enjoy looking at the colorful pictures and listening to the fun-sounding rhymes. As they get bigger, the rhymes become more challenging to their ears, and you can begin to explain to them the different items in the photos. Now that Zachary understands a lot more, I try to get him to point out the pictures of the bunnies. I’m not sure if he knows what he’s looking for yet, since he is still a bit young, but I take his finger and help him point out the different objects so he is participating in the adventure of reading the book. It’s just a fun book to look through and read, and Zachary really loves this one – he has enjoyed it since he was tiny! I think I’m going to pick up a few of the I Spy books on Amazon this week… looks like they are on sale! Check out I Spy Little Book and I Spy Little Letters. There are also I Spy books for older children, too.

More Bunny books we love:
Little Bunny (a recent gift from Gram Z)
The Runaway Bunny (such a beautifully illustrated book with a sweet ending)
Pat the Bunny (such a classic!)
Bunny’s Noisy Book (a sweet book about exploring)
The Velveteen Rabbit (the classic story – I prefer this version)
The Tale of Peter Rabbit (another classic must-have!)
It’s Not Easy Being a Bunny (I’ll be getting this for when Zachary is older. It was one of my favorites growing up!)