The Dumb Bunnies 1994

Once upon a time there were three dumb bunnies who lived in a log cabin made out of bricks.

A cover note on this Scholastic edition by Kirkus Review says, ‘Let’s not elevate this by calling it wit.’

The Great Green Room retains its original folded blanket, the bowl full of mush and a lady knitting. The addition of twin lava lamps and flippers for Baby Bunny to go ice skating under the lake are a great invitation for the reader to start giggling. and Dav Pilkey’s rabbits gaze out at the reader, full of the self-satisfied knowledge that what their family does is always right.

Pilkey acknowledged his source with Special thanks to Thacher Hurd and the folks at HarperCollins for letting the Dumb Bunnies spend the night in the Good Night Moon Room.

Big Bob beams from his new home in Perth, Western Australia. We made the move west in early 1994, and by year’s end he would have a new baby sister. But for now I had baby and bookshelf settled. His grin seems to say, You’re never going to read that 3 volume Shelby Foote history of the Civil War! and he was right.

When I first thought of writing this blog, I was going to select and write about all my favourite picture books. A word that is (as it turns out) very unhelpful when choosing books to write about. How was I to create a manageable and achievable list out of favourite…what?  Favourite books by illustrators I revered; favourite ones with green covers; favourite obscure titles where I could really show off?

In the end, I decided on the restriction that the book for each year between 1977 – 2017 would have to have been first published in that year.  Unfortunately this eliminated Goodnight Moon, even though Big Bob and I enjoyed it together at least once daily, from birth until he was toddling, when Peepo! took over.

I hadn’t know that this classic book – first published in 1947 –  existed before I went to the US.  (Although other American titles were listed in Babies Need Books, this one wasn’t, a rare omission by Dorothy Butler.) I fell in love with it there as a storytime staple, and my children were stuck with it.

I have a visceral loathing for other parodies such as Go the F*ck to Sleep and have trained myself to look neither right nor left of bookstore registers in case I see one.

However, in the following years Big Bob and Ms May were well-primed to love the Dumb Bunnies’ plays on words, and their complete contradiction in pictures that Pilkey produced. When the animated series was shown on TV, their enjoyment was complete.

In late 1994 the newest member of our family was getting Goodnight Mooned, whether she liked it or not.