Hollow  |   Legend  |   Facts  |   Spring  |   Allies  |   Book  |   Summer  |   Friends  |   Mushrooms  |   Angel  |   Treasures  |   Play  |   Mail

 

Sleepy Bunny

 

Once there was a sleepy bunny who began to yawn ...
and he yawned and he yawned and he yawned until
you could see his white front teeth and
his little round pink mouth.
He yawned and he yawned until
suddenly a bee flew into his mouth
and he swallowed the bee!

 

[to see more Bunny yawns, click here]

 

"What shall I do?" he whispered to a squirrel who wasn't sleepy.

"Wake him up," said the squirrel. "Wake up the bumble bee."

"How?" whispered the bunny.
"All I can do is whisper, and I'm sleepy."

 

Suddenly a wise old groundhog began popping up out of the ground.
"All the better," said the groundhog. "You have to make the littlest noise that you can possibly make, because a bumblebee doesn't bother about big noises. He is a very little bee, and he is only interested in little noises."

 

So the little bunny made the sound
of a ladybug breathing
and a fly sneezing
and a sound as quiet as an egg
resting in its shell,
but the bee didn't wake up.

 

Bunny sat and thought of all the little sounds
he could think of.

And suddenly he knew the little noise that he would make

... and he made it.

 

It was like a little click made hundreds of miles away by a bumblebee
in an apple tree in full blossom on a mountaintop.
It was the very small click of a bee
swallowing some honey from an apple blossom.

 

And at that the bee woke up!
He thought he was missing something
and flew away.

 

And then what did the little bunny do … that sleepy,
sleepy little bunny?
He closed his mouth,
he closed his eyes,
he closed his ears,
and he tucked in his paws
and twitched his nose,
and he went sound asleep!

 

 

Adapted from
The Whispering Rabbit by Margaret Wise Brown
Illustrated by Cyndy Szekeres
©1948, A Golden Book, New York

 

Bunny Hollow