By Cori Doerrfeld
Taylor builds something wonderful and watches it come crashing down. One animal after another arrives with advice on how to feel about it. The rabbit is the only one who knows to just sit down and listen.
Taylor builds something wonderful out of blocks and is so proud of it, and then a flock of birds swoops down and knocks the whole thing to pieces. Taylor is crushed. One by one the animals come to help, and each of them has a plan. The chicken wants to talk it all through. The bear wants to roar about it. The elephant wants to fix it, and the ostrich wants to hide it and pretend it never happened. None of it is what Taylor needs, so one by one they give up and wander off. Then the rabbit comes. It doesn't say a word. It just moves in close and stays, and slowly, in that quiet company, Taylor is finally ready — to talk, to cry, to be angry, and eventually to imagine building again.
It's the book for the child sitting with a disappointment too big for their words, and honestly it's half a book for the grown-up next to them. Without ever spelling it out, it shows that you don't have to fix a child's sadness or talk them out of it. You just have to stay. A child who's ever had something they built or loved get wrecked will feel the sting of that first page, and then the relief of the rabbit right alongside Taylor. It's gentle enough for a preschooler, and I've handed it to plenty of grown-ups who needed the reminder more than the child did.