Full spoilers for the entire book below. Proceed with caution.
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Title: The Bunnicula Collection
Author: Deborah, James Howe
Publication Date: 1979, 1982, 1983 (novels), 1999, 2000 (audio)
Publisher: Atheneum Books (novels) Random House, Inc. (audio)
Narrated By: Victor Garber
Recording time: 6 hrs and 43 mins
THE PLOT
via wiki:
Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery (Book #1)
The novel introduces the Monroes, including the boys, Pete and Toby, as they return home from the movies on a dark and stormy night. Harold, the dog, notices that they return with a small bundle. The bundle turns out to be a rabbit they found at the theater, with a note tied around his neck written in an ancient Carpathian dialect. The rabbit has two tiny fangs and a black pattern on his back that looks like a cape. After some discussion the family decides to adopt him, and since they found him at the movie Dracula they decide to name him Bunnicula.
Shortly after adopting Bunnicula, the family notices vegetables mysteriously turning white. Chester, the cat, notices that in each of the vegetables there are two tiny holes. After reading a book on vampires, a jealous Chester becomes convinced that Bunnicula is a vampire. He notes that Bunnicula sleeps all day, appears to be able to get out of his cage on his own, and has tiny fangs, which Chester believes he uses to suck vegetables dry. Chester then convinces Harold to help him prove this by catching Bunnicula in the act. He strews himself, and Bunnicula's cage with garlic. This succeeds only in causing Mrs. Monroe to give him a bath. Later, after reading about killing vampires with a stake through the heart, Chester tries to punch a (meat) steak through the sleeping rabbit's heart. It doesn't do anything but confuse the poor rabbit, since it is just steak/meat. Finally, he tries to drown the rabbit by tossing his water dish on him. This behavior results in Chester being locked outside.
As the story progresses Harold refuses to cooperate in Chester's antics. With Chester no longer speaking to him, he begins to take a liking to Bunnicula. After a few days he notices that Bunnicula is beginning to look ill. He stays up late one night and discovers that Chester is putting on garlic and blocking Bunnicula from feeding, essentially starving the poor rabbit. Harold decides to act, and that evening before Chester awakes he takes Bunnicula out of his cage and places him in the family's dinner salad. But before the rabbit can feast Chester chases him off, and lands in the salad himself. Finally fed up with Chester's behavior, Harold confronts his friend and exposes him by barking loudly, alerting the entire family. At this point the family decides to take Chester to the vet to address his strange behavior. They also decide to take Bunnicula to the vet as they notice he seems ill. At the vet Chester is prescribed cat therapy. Bunnicula is put on a diet of vegetable juice. He takes to this so well, that the family decides to keep him on it permanently, at which point the mysterious white vegetables stop turning up. However, the Monroes attribute the strange white vegetables to a vegetable blight at their supermarket, and change stores. The novel ends with the Monroes remaining blissfully unaware of Bunnicula's strange feeding habits, and the danger Chester believes them to be in.
Howliday Inn (Book #2)
When the Monroe family decides to leave for a vacation, they send Harold and Chester off to a kennel called Chateau Bow-Wow, where they meet the other inhabitants of the kennel, including a poodle named Louise and two Dachshunds named Heather and Howard. The owner of the kennel, Dr. Greenbriar, takes the week off and the other staff, Jill and Harrison, are overworked. Louise goes missing and Chester becomes convinced that foul play was involved before he vanishes as well. Upon returning, he leads the other animals to find Harrison trying to capture Heather and Howard. Chester tells Harold later that Harrison caught wind that one of the animals in the shelter was very valuable. He kidnapped Louise and then Chester, thinking that it could have been one of them. It is revealed that it was the Dachshunds, who are rare wire-haired Dachshunds. When the Monroe family returns from their vacation, they reveal that they are adopting the runt of the Dachshund litter, who they name Howie.
The Celery Stalks at Midnight (Book #3)
Bunnicula has gone missing and Chester begins to fear for the town again. He believes that the vegetables that Bunnicula sucks dry could return as the rabbit's vampire slaves to use as an army to take over the town. He, Harold, and Howie set off to search the neighborhood. They witness Toby and Pete wearing dark robes and holding a group of frightened children prisoner. The pets fear that Bunnicula has begun to control people and run to the nearby school. After causing much mayhem they are caught by the Monroes. It is revealed that there was a carnival at the school that day and Toby, Pete and the other children were rehearsing for a play they were going to put on. Bunnicula is discovered to have been entered in the pet show at school. The title is a reference to the 1951 animated film of the same name by John Whitney.
My Review
Note: Before I really get into the rest of the book review, I want to warn any parents who give this book to a child, that it's main dog character is a regular eater of chocolate cupcakes. I don't know if the knowledge that chocolate is bad for dogs was absent in the early 1980s, but you might want to reiterate that message to any kid to whom you give this story that Harold the dog should not be eating chocolate and that it's bad for him. We don't want to encourage copycat behavior.
With that preamble out of the way, I am happy to have revisited some of my favorite books from when I was a youngster. The purpose of revisiting the stories, in addition to determining how much I still enjoy them today, was also to determine how well-suited they are for a young audience of the present. Experience has taught me that the stories shared with kids, when I was a kid, were often traumatizing, or at least inappropriate in sone significant way. I am happy to report that these books are still pretty enjoyable and are also safe books for most young readers to pick up.
The general consensus online was that these books are roughly on a 3rd to 5th grade reading level, and after going through them myself, I concur. The nature of the characters is such that Harold the dog and Chester the cat solve "Horror-Lite" (my term) mysteries together and have a very Watson and Holmes dynamic. Chester in particular is prone to making smart-sounding literary references that are likely to go over the head of a lot of younger readers. That's fine though! Harold is the narrator and he doesn't understand Chester, either. You don't need to understand every word to follow the story and you don't need to understand all the references to understand that the events unfolding are being misunderstood by the family pet detectives.
If you have a sensitive kid, you might want to reassure them that everyone in the story turns out fine, and that nobody is harmed, before you turn them loose with the series. That said, I really don't think you have much reason to worry in the first place.
In the first book, for example, Chester the cat - convinced the new family rabbit "Bunnicula" is a dangerous vampire - starts taking his food away in an effort to starve him. This doesn't get far because Harold the dog intervenes, and Bunnicula ends up on a vegetable juice diet. In many respects, the edge is taken off of Chester's apparently cruel actions because there is some mystery at the end of the story as to whether he was right about Bunnicula being a vampire.
The second book centers around the pets' adventures while being boarded. They uncover a plot by one of the employees to steal and sell the puppies of some fellow boarders. Prior to that, they suspected each other of murder after a couple of the pets began to go missing (all of the pets are returned safely and completely unharmed - except for the indignity of being forced to watch daytime television.) I did not think the story was told in a way wherein the plot is emotionally difficult to digest, but some kids might, especially if they are unfamiliar with the idea of murder (or of the reality that many/most puppies are usually given or sold to new families, away from their dog parents.)
The last book was the least scary of all. The pet detectives are now joined by Howie - one of the puppies from the previous book - and they are once again suspicious of Bunnicula after he disappears from his cage and white, juice-less vegetables are found once again. Most of what happens in this book is built around silly misunderstandings of what the humans are doing, however, but if your kid is scared of the idea of an undead artichoke, serving the will of a vampire rabbit, this just might not be the series for you.
This is definitely a book series in the Children's Lit category, rather than YA, though it makes several literary references that one might need to be a teenager to grasp. I actually like that the books do this, inasmuch as these references convey to its younger readers that a larger world of books is out there, ready to be explored. Bunnicula conveys this in a way where the reader confusion does not make for story confusion.
I enjoyed Victor Garber's audio narration. If you're using these books to help practice reading, the audiobooks might be a good supplement to help gauge how much and how well a young reader is understanding the story. You can read, then listen to fill in the gaps, then read some more. His performance is entertaining and really brings the pets to life.
Overall, I enjoyed this series and I recommend it if you're in the mood for a story where pet humor and horror occur in a child-friendly way.
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