Banning Bunnicula Will Not Save Your Child
She may still grow up to read Dracula
When I was in fifth grade, my teacher told us which books from the Scholastic book order form were off limits. She made us cross out Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe. It was a Christian school, and we were used to having things banned.
Yesterday, I finally read Bunnicula — thirty five years after crossing it out with big X. In case you’re unfamiliar with the story, it’s about a vampire bunny who sucks the juices from vegetables. The story is narrated by the family dog, Harold. The cat, Chester, believes they have to protect the family — and the world — from Bunnicula, the new pet rabbit. Hijinks ensue. It’s a cute story, cleverly written. I would have loved it when I was a kid, had I been allowed to order it from the Scholastic book order form.
My teacher meant well.
If I had really wanted to read Bunnicula back then, I could have gotten it from the public library. Now that I’m an adult, I understand why she wouldn’t let us order it. Many of my classmates’ families would have been horrified if the school had allowed their child to order a book about vampires. My teacher would likely have been reprimanded for letting us order it. Never mind that the vampire in question was a bunny who sucked vegetable juice.
Years later, when I was a high school English teacher, I assigned Dracula to one of my classes. A parent emailed me with her concerns. Dracula is so dark, she said. She provided me with a list of other books we could read, just in case my English degree had left me unaware of the canon of classic literature. I offered to let her son read Great Expectations instead. She declined — she didn’t want me to give him something else to read; she wanted me to give everyone else’s child something else to read, too.
We had just finished In Cold Blood, by the way. It’s just as dark as Dracula, but worse — because it’s a true story, and because good doesn’t triumph over evil in In Cold Blood as it does in Dracula. If she had been the expert on classic literature that she believed she was, she would have known this.
Parents never complained about the books they should have complained about. You want to know what’s really dark? Macbeth. No parent has ever complained about Shakespeare. In fact, we read Macbeth at my Christian school. That’s right — Bunnicula was banned; Macbeth was read aloud, witches and all.
Every line the nurse speaks in Romeo and Juliet is about sex. No parent has ever complained about Romeo and Juliet. And talk about a dark story.
I actually do believe that parents have a right to request that their child (not someone else’s) be given an alternative assignment. They have a right to say to their child, “No, you cannot order Bunnicula from this Scholastic book order form.” In fact, monitoring what your child reads is part of responsible parenting. But here’s the thing: you can ban Bunnicula, but the child may still grow up to be a public school English teacher who assigns Dracula to her students. She may, in fact, become a fantasy writer.
My first novel comes out this month. There is, in fact, a vampire in it. And zombies. Ghosts. Monsters. So much magic — my fifth grade teacher will be disappointed in me. If it were ever to appear in a Scholastic book order form (unlikely), the Christian school I attended would make students draw a big X through it. My point is that banning Bunnicula did no good.
