Pulitzer Prize-winner Toni Morrison returns with her son Slade for asecond kids` book, this one a catalog of the "mean people" in a young rabbit`slife. The results, happily, make for much more fun than the Morrison duo`sweirdly subtle The BigBox."This is a book about mean people," begins our tiny hero, and almost immediatelywe realize that illustrator Pascal Lema+«tre is going to give cartoonist MattGroening a run for his money when it comes to goofily rendered rabbits. Each"mean" person gets playful, exaggerated, kid-perspective treatment fromLema+«tre, whether we`re seeing a towering dad who barely fits onto two pages("Some mean people are big") or a mother who`s using her nearly telescopic armto force veggies down our hero`s throat ("There are people who smile when theyare being mean"). The rabbit`s "Mean People" book gets assembled page by page,and no one is spared--not grandparents, brothers, teachers, not even ababysitter with an alarm clock five times the size of her head.The Morrisons maintain some of their Big Box subtlety by begging thequestion--of both kids and grownups--of why and whether and which ofthese people are really "mean" at all. (Even young kids will see the differencebetween making somebody get out of bed in the morning and tearing the wings offa butterfly.) Whatever the lesson, The Book of Mean People endsinevitably, triumphantly--"I will smile anyway!"--with a joyous, naked plungeinto a flowery forest. ("How about that!") (Ages 4 to 8) --Paul Hughes
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