Bunnicula

Looking for dark mystery, intro to dracula, kid lit and pets as main characters?

This week's pick is Bunnicula: The Graphic Novel, by James Howe and Andrew Donkin with illustrations by Stephen Gilpin. This adaptation was published by Athenium books for Young Readers in 2022.

I had to pick up this book as soon as I realized it existed because I was raised on Bunnicula and the subsequent series. Something I apparently had been taking for granted; I was frankly shocked by how many millennials in my life now had never even heard of it!

Content notes for horror tropes and scary/ominous situations? The publisher suggests this book for kids aged 8-12.

Flipping Bunnicula over the publisher describes it thusly "Beware the hare! Harold the dog and Chester the cat must find out the truth about the newest pet in the Monroe household - a suspicious-looking bunny with unusual habits... and fangs! Could this innocent-seeming rabbit actually be a vampire?"

Diving right in. I am very biased but I find the writing in Bunnicula to be truly delightful. As an adult I see the metaphorical stakes as incredibly small (who even cares if the bunny sucks the juice out of vegetables?) but it hardly matters because Harold the dog's skepticism vs Chester the cat's obsession just pulled me right back in and I feel like this dynamic makes it the perfect introduction for kids to dracula lore.

Obviously it's been a hot minute since I was originally read Bunnicula so I'm not exactly sure what changes were made in this update/adaption. That said, Harold does do some research on a family computer... which I suspect was not in the original. That said, they still do a lot of reading research so I suspect updates were fairly minimal. I actually feel like they should have done a lot more, but I'll outline that a bit more later.

Looking at the writing team: Bunnicula was original created by both Deborah and James Howe. Sadly, Deborah is only credited at the start of the series (originally published in 1979) because she died of cancer at the age of 31 in 1978. Deborah and James met while attending Boston University, and they eventually married and moved to New York City for their acting careers. They wrote Bunnicula and Teddy Bear's Scrapbook while Deborah was receiving treatment for ameloblastoma at St. Vincent's Hospital, which would eventually lead James into a prolific writing career spanning picture books to young adult lit.

Doing research into this review was all the excuse I needed to pick up two of his other picture books, Brontorina and Tyrone O'Saurus Dreams. Picture books that both turned out to be about dinosaurs fulfilling their dreams of becoming dancers. If you're in the market for picture books I would recommend.

Since the death of Deborah, James apparently has been married, had a kid, wrote The Misfits and came out as gay, got divorced and eventually got married once again in 2011 to longtime partner Mark Davis. Not to mention, the about section on Howe's website also serves up a delightful amount of pet pictures!

Co-author Andrew Donkin is apparently no stranger to working on graphic adaptions, and has helped adapt a number of works by Eoin Colfer including Artamis Fowl, Illegal and The Supernaturalist. According to his website "He happily believes he is the only writer alive to have written for the characters of Batman, Superman, Doctor Who, and Artemis Fowl." He seems to be from the opposite side of the pond from me, but he never identifies his home base so who knows.

Looking at the art. As usual the thing that gets the most critiques in the reviews that I perused although I don't really feel like I got a strong indication why. As someone who enjoys certain eras of vertigo art, I appreciated the fact that the line quality felt like a bit of a call back to the really scratchy and jagged hatching of horror comics of yore. Although the color scheme was a bit too one note to really pay complete homage. Although I suspect people would have liked that even less? I don't know...

Illustrator Stephen Gilpin has (among many other things) also worked on a number of Artemis Fowl adaptations and currently lives in Kansas with "wife Jen, some kids, pets and chickens." He's won the 2010 Abilene ISD Mockingbird Award, the 2015 Comstock-Gag Read Aloud Book Award, and the Bill Martin Jr. Picture Book Award of 2009. Stephen was also nominated for the 2010 Ignatz award for Outstanding Online Comic.

Looking at the intersections, identities and themes that I like to talk about in each of my reviews:

A story about a seemingly white seemingly heterosexual couple, their two presumably cis sons and three male pets is certainly not the most diverse cast, and all those seemings and presumablies speak to the fact that the identities of our characters are not explored in any way. As it goes sometimes. Class, place and ability/disability are similarly unexplored.

And this is where I kind of feel like some updating would have been nice. Because if none of these aspects of identity seem to really impact the story all that much (beyond the fact that this family does not appear to have an economic care in the world) why not mix it up a bit. I'm not saying I have anything personally against James Howe, Bunnicula makes a lot of sense to me in the context of when it was written and who wrote it, but I do think this is the danger of reinvigorating nostalgic IPs and not just letting the old stuff continue to exist and fund new and more diverse stuff. But that is much bigger picture then just Bunnicula.

Focusing back on the book at hand, all that isn't to say that Bunnicula isn't othered. The closest analogy to vampirism in my experience is disability. And excluding people because of physical differences is certainly not something you want to teach children. I hope the fact Chester is the only one who seems truly convinced that Bunnicula is a problem, and is rendered a rather comical character for it, balances things out. But perhaps my enjoyment of classic vampire tropes is rendering me deluded.

Wrapping things up, I did want to also point back to my review of The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids Graphic Novels Volumes 1-3 as they have a similar introduce children to horror tropes vibe, although certainly significantly brighter in tone I suppose and skewed ever so slightly younger.

Trying to be somewhat clear headed I would say that Bunnicula is good and thus rate it three out of five stars.