Customer Reviews

Nina Bonita: A Story (Children's Books from Around the World)

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I loved this book! We're a bilingual family and when we first read this story in Spanish, my children and I laughed and squealed with delight. The language is uniquely latin, and the author uses the words pu-pu for poop, and pipi for pee which made us really laugh.

But the sweetness of the story is really how the little white bunny fell in love with the little black girls' striking beauty, and determined that if he himself could not look like her, then he would seek to marry a black and beautiful rabbit, and perhaps have children who were beautiful and dark.

A very sweet story.. beautifully illustrated! As a bilingual mom of a 5 month-old baby, I enjoyed reading this book. Although the title suggest a book in Spanish, it's actually beautifully written in English.

A beautiful, dark-skinned little girl who lives near the seaside is the inspiration for this utterly charming tale about differences and the acceptance of others. Nina Bonita has "eyes like two shiny black olives", hair that is pitch black and curly and skin that is "dark and glossy like a panther in the rain". When her mother arranges her hair into tiny braids, she looks like a princess of Africa or "a fairy from the Kingdom of the Moon".

One day a white rabbit, with pink ears and dark red eyes, inquires, "What is your secret? What makes your skin so dark and pretty?" Since she doesn't know what to say, Nina Bonita answers that when she was a baby, black ink spilled on her. The rabbit pours ink all over himself and, sure enough, he is black... for a while. Then the rain washes all the ink away. Nina says, "I drank lots of hot coffee" and the rabbit drinks so much coffee that he can't go to sleep, but he doesn't turn black; "I ate lots of blackberries", so he does, but he doesn't turn black, although he does get a terrible stomach ache. The rabbit is very discouraged, at a loss of an explanation until Nina Bonita's mother exclaims, "She looks just like her grandmother!"

The riddle is solved! The rabbit suddenly understands that if he marries a black rabbit, they will have bunnies in all shades of black, white and gray. And that's exactly what happens, baby bunnies in every shade. The softly-colored illustrations of Nina's seaside life reflect the subtle nuances of a tale of color and differences, imaginatively written with great wisdom, a simple lesson about acceptance. Luan Gaines/2006.

Good story. Great illustrations. The two parts I don't like are: (1) One of the things she tells the bunny is that she drank a lot of black coffee. So the bunny drinks so much that he can't sleep and "spent the whole night going to the bathroom". The illustration shows him sitting on a kitchen counter looking miserable in a big puddle of pee. (2) Another thing she tells the bunny is that she ate lots of blackberries. So the bunny ate until he was so full he couldn't move, his belly hurt, and he "spent the whole night going to the bathroom". The illustration shows him laying in the street market where he bought the basket of berries with a scattering of bunny poo all around him.

This is a beautiful and touching story. By the way, this book was originally written in Portuguese, the author is part of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. This story was inspired by her baby daughter, whose skin was actually very white but different from her brothers who had darker skin and loved her very much. This story shows that skin color doesn't matter and we can love one another despite of our differences in any level.

My daughter is African and Mexican American, so we love books that celebrate African/Latin heritage and this does it beautifully. The illustrations and the rythm of the writing are so well matched. This is one of our favorites.

This book is great. The illustrations are awesome and the story is beautiful. I bought it to read to my foster children. It's basically about a white rabbit who meets a young black girl and wants to know what he can do to be black and beautiful like her.