On Thursday morning there was a carrot on the kitchen counter with two fork holes in it. Nobody would claim it. I asked the room in general what happened to the carrot and my four-year-old, without looking up from his cereal, said "THE BUNNY BIT IT." We do not own a bunny. We were three bedtimes into Bunnicula, and he had absorbed the entire premise from the hallway like secondhand smoke.
If you missed this one, here's the setup: the Monroe family brings home a rabbit that their son Toby found at a movie theater during a screening of Dracula, which is the kind of detail I would have found unbearably cool in 1993 and still find unbearably cool now. The family cat, Chester, who reads serious literature and drinks milk and takes himself extremely seriously, becomes convinced the rabbit is a vampire and that the household is in danger. Meanwhile vegetables around the house are turning up with the juice sucked clean out of them. The whole thing is narrated by Harold, the family dog, who is old and scruffy and fundamentally decent, and who regards Chester's escalating crisis the way you'd watch a coworker slowly lose his mind over the office thermostat.
The dog is narrating, and that's the whole trick
I said in my notes that this book is criminally undersold and I stand by it. People remember the gimmick (vampire bunny, ha ha) and forget that the actual engine is Harold's voice, which is dry and warm and patient in a way that most adult narrators can't manage. Harold tells you things a dog would notice, in the tone of a guy who has seen a lot of family nonsense and loves everybody anyway. The jokes are built for two audiences at once: my daughter laughed at Chester being ridiculous, and I laughed at how Chester is ridiculous, which is a different and slightly sadder joke about people who have read too many books. Also worth knowing: Deborah Howe died before the book was even printed, and James Howe carried it the rest of the way and eventually wrote six more. The book is funnier than a book with that backstory has any right to be, and I think that's part of why I trust it.
The ambiguity is my favorite adult-level move. The book never actually settles whether Bunnicula is a vampire. Chester is certain; the evidence is a rabbit who sleeps a lot and some drained produce; the authors just let it sit there. My daughter noticed this. On the last night she closed her eyes for a second and said "they never said if he was one," in the exact tone she used to complain about Saxonberg, which for her constitutes a rave.
Chester is a gift to anyone who does voices
Read-aloud-wise, this book hands you two great instruments. Harold got a low, tired, decent-hearted rumble that I'm fairly sure I borrowed from every golden retriever I've ever met. Chester got clipped and over-enunciated, a cat who has annotated his own paperbacks. My only performance note from the eight-year-old came on night one, when she informed me the cat voice was "too normal." I fixed it. She did not comment again, which in this house is a standing ovation from a general.
Engagement report: the daughter was locked in for all three nights, and on night two I found her in the kitchen after lights-out with the crisper drawer open, holding a tomato up to the light. She said "just checking" and went back to bed. That's her, at maximum enthusiasm. The four-year-old can't follow a chapter book yet, but he hovered at the doorway for the premise, committed carrot forensics in my kitchen, and has asked me twice whether bunnies have teeth (yes) and whether ours is coming (no, buddy, there is no ours).
Reads five through infinity
Re-read durability is where a lot of funny books die, because jokes wear out faster than plots. This one holds up because the comedy lives in the delivery, and delivery is the read-aloud dad's whole job. The chapters are short, the pacing never sags, and I could start it again tonight without sighing, which puts it in a small club. As for message: it's not really teaching anything, and I respect that, though if you squint there's a decent lesson in the gap between Chester's certainty and the actual harmless rabbit. Don't panic about the new weird family member. Also, Toby stays up late reading with snacks and shares them with the dog, which is the correct model of a reading life and I will be citing it to my children.
Nostalgia disclosure, since I try to be honest about this: I read Bunnicula somewhere around fourth grade and loved it, so I re-read it alone as a 41-year-old before starting it with my daughter, specifically to check whether I was grading on a curve. I wasn't. It's a five. There are six more books in the series and my daughter has already asked, in her flattest voice, whether the library has them. It does. I checked before she asked.
