Bunnicula book and a movie

I remember reading Bunnicula as a kid.  I loved this book and when I found out there was a movie version of this classic, it shot up to the top of our book and a movie list.  My kids read the book in a week and loved it.

The movie, well it’s unique.

{This post contains affiliate links, for more information see my Disclosure Page}

Bunnicula summary

Bunnicula is a rabbit the Monroe family found at the movies when they’d gone to a monster movie marathon.  They introduce him to their other pets, Chester the cat and Harold the dog, but Chester is sure there is something weird about Bunnicula.  Will the Monroes be able to figure out what is different about Bunnicula before Chester stakes him as a vampire?

Bunnicula movie

We watched the movie on Youtube.  It’s really terrible.  Ever since we watched this movie when we run into a movie that has absolutely nothing to do with the book we call it “pulling a Bunnicula.”  That being said I had all sorts of flashbacks to being a kid as it reminded me of so many 1980’s made for TV movies.

Now, since we had our Bunnicula book and a movie, someone, I don’t know who has come out with a Bunnicula TV series. It has about as much to do with the books as the 80s TV special did.

What to do when your movie misses the mark

All too often the movies are nothing like the book.  It makes for great discussions of how they are different from each other and what creative ideas we enjoy each day.  Sometimes though, the movie is so bad there’s just no redeeming it, like Bunnicula or Eragon (it’s so bad I’m not assigning the book, but then the series just went downhill).  Then you can have a lot of fun trashing the movie.  I mean that’s what we did as we watched it, and now we make a lot of jokes about it.  “What should we watch?”

“How about Bunnicula?”

“Are you trying to torture me into revealing my secret plot?”

Yes, those are actual conversations we’ve had.  Sometimes you just have to laugh at your disappointment.

Bunnicula movie snacks

I spent longer making the snacks than the movie was.

Okay, if I’m honest my kids helped prepare a lot of the snacks.

That being said, here are our snacks for the movie:

• Steak, in the book Chester attempts to kill Bunnicula with steak, not a wooden stake, but steak.
• Salad drenched in ranch dressing, all throughout the book the family keeps discovering white vegetables, and the ranch dressing made our salad white.
• Chester’s cat paws- these were fun cookies that vaguely reminded us of cat’s paws.  It’s a bit of a stretch, but it’s fun.
• Scottie Dog Shortbread– Harold the dog, my kids really like these cookies
• Bunny Grahams– to represent Bunnicula of course
• white mini donuts with green frosting– for all those poor tomatoes that had their juices sucked out of them

orange fanta– carrot juice of course

garlic bread- you have to protect yourself from vampires, they’re dangerous!

I know, it’s high on the cheesiness factor, but I’m not super creative in the food category, so it’s a lot of what we use our imagination for.  To go with the Halloween theme, instead of my normal book and activity board I would share, I’ll share with you our Halloween board:

I love this absolutely crazy bunny I found when trying to find a new image for the post!

More great 3rd grade activities

This was one of the very first books we read for book and a movie combination.

• Venus unit
• Charlotte’s Web book club
• Holocaust picture books
• 5 Beginning chapter book series
• King Tut funerary craft

“bunny of death” by Shannon K is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.