Impart­ing the les­son to young chil­dren about the val­ue of care­ful speech, this col­or­ful, cheer­ful­ly illus­trat­ed book intro­duces the read­er to Speedy, a rab­bit who is a fast run­ner. But is he fast enough to catch words, spo­ken in haste and lat­er regret­ted, before they reach the ears of a friend who will be hurt if she hears them?

Speedy did­n’t real­ize that the arrows he lent his friend, Ellie, were returned to him prompt­ly — despite the chal­lenges Ellie faced in doing so. Now he needs the arrows for an archery com­pe­ti­tion. He shouts harsh words about Ellie into the air before find­ing the arrows safe and sound in his home. Feel­ing sor­ry, Speedy real­izes there is only one thing to do: he must race as fast as he pos­si­bly can to out­run the words before they reach Ellie’s ears. Speedy finds, to his sor­row, that even with his prodi­gious speed, he can’t catch the hurt­ful words before they arrive. What he can do is ask for for­give­ness and cor­rect his own mis­takes. Thank­ful­ly, his friend is for­giv­ing, and Speedy, along with the read­er, learns impor­tant lessons about watch­ing one’s speech, being mind­ful of the feel­ings of oth­ers, the val­ue of sin­cere apol­o­gy, and the sig­nif­i­cance of warm and under­stand­ing friendship.

Speedy and the Race Against Sound is based on the Jew­ish pro­hi­bi­tion against speak­ing neg­a­tive­ly of oth­ers, known as lashon hara, which is an endur­ing theme in Jew­ish lit­er­a­ture. The bookil­lus­trates the impor­tance of cau­tious, kind, and tact­ful speech and of ask­ing a wronged friend for for­give­ness and under­stand­ing — lessons that can be learned by both chil­dren and adults alike.