My Friend Rabbit written and illustrated by Eric Rohman2003 Caldecott Medal Award• Published by: Macmillan

publishers, Lerner Publishing Group

Rabbit is a silly character who gets his best friend who is a mouse airplane stuck in a tall tree. Rabbit goes through many obstacles to try and get the plane down and Rabbit eventually saves the day with his hard effort to get mouse's airplane back.

Style & Media

Rohmann’s style represents realism or also known as representational style. This style focuses on what things actually look like in real life. The animals in this book illustrate animals that we see in the world. The author uses the shapes, color and texture to show his realism style.

Style & Media cont’d Rohmann used a type of

media called printmaking. He made the book with hand colored prints. This was the first time that Rohmann went away from oils and tried this to have a different look. He clearly succeed with this look with the style and type of media he chose.

Line Rohmann used a variety of

lines within his artwork. He used thick lines and several horizontal and vertical lines. The reason for this is because he is trying to get the reader to see everything the Rabbit is doing. On every page there is some form of action that is being presented by the animals. By using these type of lines creates movement and a flow of action.

Shape The simple more natural

look is something that Rohmann illustrated with rabbit and the other animals he encounters with his mouse friend. He draws the animals as being realistic which forms what real life animals look like. He displayed that in this book with their shapes he used to draw them.

Shape cont’dThe round shape of the hippo shows the realistic look of this animal. Also, the over exaggeration of the rabbit carrying all the animals who are much bigger than him shows his determination of getting the plane out of the big tall tree.

Color Rohmanns illustrations shows

different hues. He implemented a variety of colors on the color wheel, such as cool and warm tones. With the variety of animals he used with coloring them with realistic colors, there was no certain strategy he used for choosing. He did outline all of the animals in thick black to make the colors of the animals pop more. It allows the animals to be more appealing to the eye just by them being outlined to show depth. Even the background of each picture shared cool and warm tones and at times blended together to a cool tone to a warm tone. Example: this picture, starting at a bluish and changing to a yellowish/orange at the bottom.

Texture For each animal shown, the author

uses more rigid lines to outline there different body shapes. The lines are bumpy. Also, the author used smoother lines when showing ‘fat’ or ‘rolls’ on the bigger animals. Each animal has a different texture. Example: the bear is more shaggy with harsher lines, whereas the deer has a smooth look. Depending on what animal you look at the texture will fluctuate.

Composition On each page of My Friend

Rabbit, the author made sure that the animals were the center focus. The animals were the largest portion on the page. On each page the author used asymmetrically and symmetrically to represent certain looks. The author made sure the animals colors were darker than the background color to again make the animals the prime focus.