The Village of Round & Square Houses

Summary: "Who's in Rabbit's House?" is a story about Masai villagers who dressed up with animal masks and perform a play based on a Masai Tale. In the play, Rabbit comes home to find someone in his house who has a "big, bad voice." Rabbit tries to get the animal out but the animal refuses. Frog happened to see this and tries to help but Rabbit tells her she is too small to help. Over the course of the day, many animals see Rabbit outside her house and finds out an animal will not leave Rabbit' house. Each animal tries a different tactic in order to remove the animal, however each strategy involves ruining Rabbit's house. This results in Rabbit telling each one to "go away." As these events take place, Frog is overlooking and laughing. After all the other animals try and fail to remove the animal, Frog offers her help again with the idea of scaring the animal out. Frog pretends to be a spitting cobra in order to scare the animal out of Rabbit's house, which works. Soon, a caterpillar comes running out of the house scared where all the other animals laugh to know the "big, bad voice" was only a caterpillar. Review: The main idea of the story is Rabbit thought Frog was too small to remove the bad animal out of her house. However, after all the other bigger animals tried and failed to removed the bad animal, it turns out that Frog was the only one who could scared the animal out of Rabbit's house. I extremely enjoyed this book. I thought it had a great message by showing the irony of how people associating being small as not being able to get something done when Frog was the smallest animal but was the one to get the bad animal out of Rabbit's house. Additionally, I liked how the story included different sounds as actions in the book. For example, "And the frog laughed aloud - gdung, gdung, gdung." This is written to symbolize the sound the frog is making as he is laughing. I believe this is a good way to help students become more connected to the story because they can actually practice the sounds the animals are making. Also, I liked how the book had a portion of repetition throughout the story. Whenever a animal would try to talk to the bad animal inside Rabbit's house, he would say "I am Long One. I eat trees and trample on elephants. Go away! Or I will trample you!" I believe it was stated multiple times to emphasize how the bad animal constantly scared away the other animals.

I enjoyed reading "Who's in Rabbit's House" for many reasons. First, I very much enjoyed the illustrations throughout the story. The pictures were very detailed and made it clear that the story was being presented as a play by the characters shown wearing masks; this is an inference one may make through the pictures and is not stated in the text. I also enjoyed that the story was of African culture and can inform the reader of their traditional tales. The big idea of the story is to help others in times of need, just as the community of animals did to help get the monster out of rabbit's house.

When an unknown monster calling itself "The Long One" takes over her home, Rabbit isn't sure how to get rid of him. A series of animals offer their solutions, all of which turn out to be as destructive as they are helpful, until finally Rabbit turns to Frog, whose help she refused at the beginning.Originally published as The Long One in Aardema's 1969 collection, Tales for the Third Ear, this Masai folktale is illustrated by the marvelous Leo and Diane Dillon, who worked with Aardema on the Caldecott Medal-winning Why Mosquitos Buzz in People's Ears. The Dillons' artwork make the Masai context clear, as they present the story as a play, performed by people wearing animal masks. I understand that this format is quite appealing to young readers, although I found it somewhat distracting. I found myself wondering why the illustrators would choose to use masks that are not part of the Masai tradition, in order to retell a traditional Masai story. However that may be, the artwork was still gorgeous (as always), and the story engaging.