Heidi Heckelbeck 10 – Heidi Heckelbeck and the Tie-Dyed Bunny

Wanda Coven's Heidi Heckelbeck and the Tie-Dyed Bunny is the tenth Heidi Heckelbeck book, an early chapter story for 6 year olds about a girl who gets to take the class rabbit home and then breaks the one rule that mattered.

What happens

Heidi's name comes out of the class hat. Maggie the bunny is hers for the Easter weekend, and she comes with a list of eight rabbit rules.

Rule eight is the one about never letting Maggie loose on her own.

You can see it coming, and that is most of the fun. Heidi only wants to show the bunny the painted Easter eggs. Maggie has her own plans, which involve the bowls of dye standing on Dad's laboratory bench.

What Heidi is left holding is a white rabbit in neon pink, blue and yellow, and not much weekend left to put it right before school.

She is also a witch, which she keeps very quiet about. There is a Book of Spells under her bed and a chapter in it called Stain Removal from A to Z. (The spell works perfectly. The result is not what anybody wanted.)

It's short and it's built for a reader who has just started chapter books on their own. Short sentences, plenty of talking, and a joke every page or so from Henry, her little brother, who arrives in a magician's costume and offers to make the bunny disappear.

What I like about it is that Heidi is not a naughty child. She is a child who did one thing she knew she shouldn't, and now has a secret getting steadily worse, and you can feel her stomach going the way stomachs do.

Be ready for the American vocabulary. Mom, candy, second grade, Easter baskets. Nothing a child will trip over, though if you're reading it together you'll be doing a bit of translating as you go.

If you've got a reader who likes that particular feeling of a character knowing they're in trouble and not having told anyone yet, this is a whole book of it.

What to read next

And if Heidi suits them, you'll find Heidi Heckelbeck and the Cookie Contest in the library. Same kitchen, same small brother getting under her feet, and a contest she badly wants to win.