Books: White House Rabbit

SCAMPER: The Bunny Who Went to the White House—Anna Roosevelt Dall— Macmillan ($2). Babs and Dave booed a Presidential conference into silence to introduce to Grandfather a red-painted, white-coated, blue-collared rabbit named Scamper. “Welcome to the White House,” said Grandfather. Scamper followed the children to Grandfather’s lap, flopped his ears, ignored the conferring statesmen. That afternoon Babs and Dave took Scamper on a tour of Washington, laughed when he was unable to identify as the Treasury the building in which “dollars and quarters grow.” Taken on Grandfather’s yacht to Mount Vernon, he succeeded in ripping great tears in his patriotic suit. Scheming to get a new suit he crawled into Grandmother’s knitting bag, kept mum when she took it and him away on a flying trip. High in the air Scamper’s paws went to sleep. When he moved, he was discovered as a stowaway. Grandmother, distressed at his torn clothes, converted a partially finished green sweater into a rabbit jacket before the trip was over, shipped Scamper home to the White House. Such is the biography of Scamper, as related for children by President Roosevelt’s only daughter. For the onetime assistant editor (Babies: Just Babies). broadcaster (Best & Co.), and magazine contributor (Liberty and Cosmopolitan), the White House and its extroverted occupants have provided a lively background for her yarn. Easy to identify are Mrs. Ball’s children Anna Eleanor (“Sistie”) and Curtis (“Buzzie”) who show a mute and dazzled Scamper the White House foyer, the State dining room, the grand stairway, the Presidential study. No pedagog, Mrs. Dall imparts to her readers only as much of Washington’s historical background as Dave and Babs can remember. A direct literary descendant of Beatrix Potter’s “Peter Rabbit,” Scamper is screwed more tightly to possibility, will please modern children with its modern setting. Better than the text grown-ups will like Mrs. Marjorie Flack Larsson’s illustrations—water-colors and sketches with the low-to-the-ground perspective of childhood, showing Scamper skidding on the deck of the Sequoia, racing over the Mount Vernon lawn, traveling in Mrs. Roosevelt’s knitting bag.