Lissa Evans’s latest novel is properly funny. And like the four-year-old owner of the eponymous toy rabbit, Minnie (short for Minerva), who can’t pronounce her r’s, this book is also deceptively wise. Small Change for Stuart, Evans’s first children’s novel, was shortlisted for the Carnegie medal and the Costa children’s book award. One can imagine the elevator pitch for this new story: Alice in Wonderland meets Pixar’s Inside Out, perhaps, with a dash of Animal Farm, bearing in mind the animal dictator who has taken over Evans’s fantasy kingdom. Wed Wabbit belongs to a proud tradition of children’s fiction that uses fantasy and humour to convey complex and difficult ideas in a form that delights.
The fantasy element, which makes up the greater part of the story, is sandwiched between two sections that take place in our world. Minnie has a sister, 10-year old Fidge (Iphigenia), who is still coming to terms with the death of their father two years ago. Fidge and her dad had similar temperaments: she is responsible, sensible, thinks ahead and gets things done, but she also reins in her emotions. In contrast, Mum and Minnie are impulsive and emotional; they like poetry and hugs. Fidge blames herself when something awful happens to her young sister, and Minnie’s precious Wed Wabbit and her favourite book, The Land of Wimbley Woos (“Wead it pwoply, with expwession!” is her constant command to Fidge), take on heightened significance.
Sent to stay with Graham, her mollycoddled, annoying cousin (think Eustace in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader), Fidge releases some of her guilt and frustration by hurling Minnie’s toys downstairs into a cellar. While she is attempting to retrieve them, an uncanny storm blows up and Fidge and Graham find themselves tumbling down a wabbit hole to a land whose inhabitants look like colourful dustbins and speak in rhyme. “In Wimbley Land live Wimbley Woos / Who come in many different hues[…] Yellow are timid, Blue are strong / Grey are wise and rarely wrong …” Their king has been deposed and armies of “Blues” carry out the orders of a scary new dictator. Alarmingly, Wimbley Land is losing its colour around the edges, sucking the life out of its inhabitants. Using rhymes, riddles and colour-coded Wimbley Woos as characters-cum-formulae to solve her narrative equation, Evans has the children battle the Blues – literally and figuratively.
While occasionally sending up modern psychology (“I can’t survive a storm without my transitional object,” says Graham about a toy), Evans does a fine job of demonstrating how to get the best out of yourself and others, comedy slicing through any sentimentality like lemon. Great characters are the engine of comedy, and there are some memorable ones here. Over-the-top, theatrical Ella, toy elephant and life coach, is encouraging, promoting teamwork and openness to new possibilities. Dr Carrot, a giant plastic vegetable on wheels, belongs to Fidge’s cousin, who feels frightened much of the time. At one point Graham asks: ‘“What if I die?”’ Dr Carrot replies: ‘”What if you live?”
Fidge needs to discover something about herself on this journey, and when she does, it is very affecting. In this surreal yet deeply sane novel, Evans deftly combines heart with hilarity, emotional intelligence with one-liners. Grownups buying Wed Wabbit for a child might be tempted to keep it for themselves.
• Wed Wabbit is published by David Fickling. To order a copy for £9.34 (RRP £10.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.
