The Start of a Great Adventure

The Electronic Start of a New Easter Tradition

The Adventurous Bunny and Easter Island has quickly became a modern Easter tradition. Along with being a part of thousands of classrooms and family rooms across the USA, this delightful picture book has been selected to be read at the White House Easter Egg Roll in 1999 and 2000!

How did the story first published in cyberspace make it's way into so many hearts? It's truly Internet Easter Magic!

Mike Gralish started making Easter Egg trees while teaching his first grade students about plants and Spring. The Easter Egg trees demanded a gardener, and the gardener demanded a home and history. Thus was born the story of The Adventurous Bunny and Easter Island. The endless questions of Mike's 6 and 7 year old students helped add delightful details about the flora and fauna of this wonderful island and its big eared inhabitant.

In the spring of 1998, Mike broke out the construction paper at home for one of his daughter's school assignments; she had to design a book cover. While Melissa (6) created her cover, her sister Shelly (4) cut out colorful eggs, and Mike cut out Easter Island.

In another era this would be the end of the story.

Enter the Internet! Mike maintains the website for The Learning Box. And what's a couple of extra kilobytes in cyberspace? The scans of this storybook hit the web the Monday before Easter in 1998. It was mostly colleagues, family, friends who walked the sands of Easter Island that spring. But literature, learning and links get around on the web! The dedicated webmasters of Easter sites and Easter Link Lists mined the web and discovered this little jewel. With dozens of sites pointing the way, more and more visitors read about Adventurous Bunny in the Spring of 1999. And apparently someone in Washington DC likes to surf! For the week before Easter the White House Council called Mike to ask for the publisher's contact information. The White House wanted a copy of the book to share with the attendees at the Annual White House Easter Egg Roll!

The only publisher was the tens of thousand of citizens of the web who searched and shared!

The Big Eared Bunny hopped to the printed page with an inkjet printer and a comb binder. Adminitrator Aida Alvarez, the head of the SBA, gave her a spectacular debut reading on the South Lawn, April 5, 1999.

Now word of the Adventurous Bunny continues to spread! This Easter season over 500,000 visitors the whole world over will once again share the joy that comes from rebirth with their own Little Hands.

Thank you for sharing this tradition, too!

Let's go!