A warren of bunnies led the herd at the HarperCollins Spring 2015 Preview on October 15, with the furry creatures making appearances in three picture books: award -winning illustrator Kadir Nelson’s If You Plant a Seed (March) features a rabbit who, along with a mouse, demonstrates the wonders of planting and growing; Mary Lundquist pairs a Cat & Bunny (January) in her debut picture book about friendship; and it takes three exclamation points to describe Kevan Atteberry’s 13-word picture book Bunnies!!! (January). However, tons of other fun animals were featured, too: an alligator takes center stage in Katherine Hannigan’s debut, Gwendolyn Grace (April); a fowl gets an education in Laura Wall’s Goose Goes to School (June); and a fox and a rat build a clubhouse in Alison Friend’s Freddy & Frito and the Clubhouse Rules (May). Despite this bevy of beasts, humans were well-represented, too. Amelia Bedelia-meets-Downton Abbey in Caleb Krisp’s new darkly funny four-book series about a 12-year-old maid named Ivy Pocket. The first book, Anyone but Ivy Pocket (April), finds the hilariously inept Ivy in the midst of a mystery involving murder and ghosts. And don’t miss Sarah Pennypacker’s Meet the Dullards (March), illustrated by Daniel Salmieri, a riotously funny picture book about parents who are determined to raise boring children. The seasons were a popular subject, too. Author-illustrator Carin Berger transforms scraps of fabric and other found and collected objects to create collage pictures for her picture book Finding Spring (January). Meanwhile, Caldecott Honor–winning author-illustrator Peter McCarty portrays the joy of a First Snow (January) with his charming illustrations featuring endearing animals in his trademark minimalist style that readers will recognize from his previous works, such as Chloe (2012) and Henry in Love (2009, both HarperCollins). Summer trips were a popular subject for books aimed at the middle-grade set. With Gone Crazy in Alabama (April), Rita Garcia Williams finishes her acclaimed trilogy about the Gaither sisters, three girls growing up in 1960s Brooklyn. The first book in the series, One Crazy Summer (Harper, 2010), garnered her a Newbery Honor and a Coretta Scott King Award and was a National Book Award finalist. In this latest, the girls spend the summer in Alabama with their grandmother and realize how different life in the rural South can be. In The Forget-Me-Not Summer by Lelia Howard, three sisters from Los Angeles spend a very different vacation in Nantucket, MA. Both books are charmers, and readers will enjoy comparing and contrasting the two groups of siblings. In Terra Elan McVoy’s Drive Me Crazy (April), two girls with little in common, whose  grandparents have just gotten married, join the newlyweds on a honeymoon roadtrip that that eventually cements their friendship. And finally in Thanhha Lai’s newest, Listen Slowly (February), Mai spends the summer traveling to Vietnam with her grandmother to find out what really happened to her grandfather. Middle-grade readers who crave historical fiction will enjoy Rob Sharenow’s The Girl in the Torch (May), set in turn-of-the-century New York and involving the Statue of Liberty and described as Hugo Cabret-meets-the film True Grit. Self-identity was another theme that popped up. Younger readers will love Michael Hall’s Red: A Crayon’s Story (February), the tale of a blue crayon with a red wrapper grappling with an identity crisis, while teens from all walks of life will enjoy reading about the Oreo-loving protagonist of Becky Albertalli’s Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda (April), who keeps his sexual identity a secret but finds himself blackmailed when the wrong person comes across a private email. Fans of graphic novels are in for a treat as well. Gris Grimly presents an artistic interpretation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet, his first work to feature Detective Sherlock Holmes. Noelle Stevenson’s Nimona, out this May, will please followers of the popular fantasy web comic of the same name. On a more serious note, several darker novels prompted editors at the preview to coin the term Sick Lit, describing books in which characters face serious illness. Part of the Katherine Tegen imprint, Amy Reed’s Invincible (April) is described as John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars-meets-Go Ask Alice and centers around teenage Evie, who is suffering from cancer but whose new boyfriend may be even more dangerous.