Seek-and-find aficionados who loved, or who missed sailing on, Nohana’s Penguin Cruise (2025) will want to explore the five stories (as in floors) and 25 stories (as in tales), one per apartment, featured in this Japanese import. Endpapers introduce the 50-plus inhabitants: rabbit kits and adults, plus two cats, two mice, a flock of small yellow birds, and a smiling green dinosaur. A job or hobby identifies most residents: There are several musicians and three ballet dancers, two magicians and a wizard, a detective, bakers, a painter, a gardener, a bodybuilder, a scholar, and a bookworm, as well as an unnamed rabbit-ghost pianist! The slight storyline centers on one rabbit family with quintuplets as they move in. Readers are invited to follow the varied daily activities of the lagomorphs—and the hilariously incongruous sauropod—as they decorate, cook, play, care for pets and plants, practice their professions, and nap. On the last six pages the residents orchestrate a joyous rooftop housewarming party, welcoming the newcomers with music, dancing, and food. A couple of the round-limbed, stuffielike rabbits are solid gray or tan, but most are white, a few with brown extremities; some wear accessories, but no one is fully clothed. The minutely detailed interiors, rendered in a gentle palette, invite patient solo scrutiny and narrative invention.
