School Library Journal Review
PreS-Gr 2Take one resolute Ruby, add one sly Max, blend in a shopping trip to buy Grandmother's birthday presentand a money mix-up is sure to happen. Ruby's gift of choice is a ballerina-decorated music box, Max's is vampire teeth oozing cherry syrup. The music box proves too expensive, the teeth drool all over Max's outfit, resulting in a side trip to the laundromat, but Grandma does get two birthday presents that please her indeed. Before that happy ending, however, a lesson on the value of money cleverly unfolds. To help her young audience, Wells provides visual clues in the form of Bunny Money and invites readers to photocopy, cut out, and paste together the sheets of Bunny dollars included, which depict Max, Ruby, and a chuckle-inducing assortment of well-known figures (Julia Child, Desmond Tutu, Fred Astaire, Jane Austen, Jesse Owens) in rabbit guise. In relation to the many math picture books currently being published, this title rates up there with Stuart Murphy's "MathStart" series (HarperCollins) and Loreen Leedy's Monster Money Book (Holiday, 1992). As usual, Wells's line work is extraordinary; with seemingly minimum effortbut with maximum effectthe changing expressions on her characters' faces deftly delineate their personalities. To sum up, Wells's droll humor is right on the money.Barbara Elleman, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Those rambunctious rabbit siblings, Max and Ruby, embark on another mishap-filled adventure in Wells's typically funny new book. In a story line similar to that of Bunny Cakes, Ruby hatches a well-intentioned plan to do something nice for her grandmother. In this case, Ruby takes her little brother along to buy Grandma a dazzling birthday present. But Max has ideas of his own, which include stopping for lunch and purchasing vampire teeth "with oozing cherry syrup inside" for Grandma. By excursion's end, Ruby's wallet is empty, Max's tummy is full and Grandma receives not one but two spectacular birthday surprises. Economical sentences consistently pack a humorous punch as well as propel the action. (One quibble: the title may lead some readers to expect that the text includes factual information about currency. All Max and Ruby learn is that spending stops when the money runs out.) Wells's jolly paintings are simultaneously crisp and cozy, depicting Max and Ruby in their characteristically bright outfits, and spot illustrations of Ruby's wallet and bills allow kids to perform some simple subtraction as they read along. A set of instructions for "making money" explains how kids can photocopy the book's endpapers and construct their own bunny bucks; adults won't want to miss Wells's bunnified portraits of the real-life heroes that adorn her comic currency. Ages 4-8. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
