In Miss Potter, the beautiful film about beloved picture book creator Beatrix Potter, The Tale of Peter Rabbit is disdainfully dismissed as a "bunny book" by the elder two Warne brothers, who agree to publish it only as a special project for their little brother. I wonder what they would have thought of The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry.

Unlike Potter's classic tale, The Bunny Book is not a story. It's simply a picture book devoted to the subject of rabbits. Scarry is most famous for his books featuring the residents of Busytown, who are cartoonish, anthropomorphic animals. The rabbits in this book are much more realistic-looking - but also a bit boring. Brown is the predominant color throughout the book, and there is little of the expressive vibrance so typical of Scarry's work.

The book is very straightforward, listing certain traits of rabbits, such as their speed and their tendency to have large families. It points out that there are many different types of rabbits and identifies eight specific breeds: snowshoe, angora, lop-eared, chinchilla, Dutch, Vienna blue, Flemish giant and cottontail. Five of these breeds appear together on one page, which is nice for the sake of comparison, but because only the heads are shown, some of the unique traits of each breed are rather unclear. Scarry also could have gone a little further in demonstrating how rabbits live, such as mentioning their homes or the particular terms for male, female and juvenile rabbits.

While most of the book deals with rabbits in nature, there are nods to other manifestations of rabbits. Scarry gives a nod to the story of the tortoise and the hare, though in this case it's a turtle and a rabbit, and he insists that the turtle is incapable of beating a rabbit in a race. In fact, it's this statement that ends the book, which seems like a strange way to conclude. Scarry also mentions chocolate bunnies, and he acknowledges anthropomorphic rabbits with the amusing comment that "rabbits like to get all dressed up if they are going to be in a story book."

The Bunny Book has some cute illustrations and solid information, and it's presented in a way that is easy for early readers to digest, with rarely more than a sentence on any given page. While I find its organization a little lacking and the pictures not as engaging as those in his later books, it is a worthwhile book for young children who are curious about the habits of rabbits.