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Reviewed by:
  • Letitia Rabbit's String Song
  • J. Donald O'Hara (bio)
Letitia Rabbit's String Song Russell Hoban . Illustrated by Mary Chalmers. (Coward, McCann & Geohegan, $3.64).

String song? Yes. The Birch Hollow rabbits call spring string, an identity confusion based on their discovery of a strange ball of string, years ago—a discovery that naturally enough triggered off an annual festival. But this year Letitia Rabbit horses around with the string, and it leads her to its owner, Miss Green.

Miss G. is involved in an awkwardly unregularized relationship with the frigid Mr. Brumus, for whom she must draw snowflake patterns (in this world each flake isn't unique) and frost flowers until with her magic ball of string, which rolls to places where songs are being sung under the ground, she finds the song that puts Mr. B. to sleep for a while. "I do all kinds of things I like to do," she tells Letitia, "but I can't do any of them until Mr. Brumus goes to sleep, and sometimes he's just so stubborn I don't know what to do." Now, we know what would warm Mr. B. and put him to sleep, but Miss G.—despite her common-law situation—hasn't figured it out. So she and Letitia go to work; but Miss G.'s on the verge of a nervous breakdown ("I'm so far behind and anxious by now that the harder I try the less good it does"), so her young surrogate ("Well," said Letitia, "I am this year's Miss Green in Birch Hollow") must cut the mustard for her.

A delayed climax is a serious matter, of course, but by dealing with a fox and singing about honey—easily interpretable matters—Letitia, whose name means happiness, brings sleep to Mr. B., evokes "a big sigh of relief" from Miss G., and wins many hugs and kisses for herself (from Miss G., of course) and an invitation to come again.

What will children think of all this? The more sophisticated will just yawn knowingly, I suppose, while the more naive will focus on the "string song" and smoker at those dumb rabbits who can't tell tea from pee. [End Page 234]

J. Donald O'Hara

J. Donald O'Hara, Ph. D., Harvard University, has made a special study of modern and romantic literature. He has published in Book World, Saturday Review, New Yorker, and elsewhere.

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