One evening in 1977, James Howe and his wife, Deborah, sat down at their kitchen table in a Brooklyn Heights apartment, and Bunnicula the vampire bunny was born. Aging quite gracefully, Bunnicula appears this month in his sixth adventure by James Howe, Bunnicula Strikes Again! (Atheneum). The publisher is also releasing a 20th-anniversary edition of the inaugural story, Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery, which contains a new afterword by the author.
A character that has become well-known to many kids over the years -- there are more than eight million Bunnicula books in print -- this eccentric rabbit and his pals, Harold and Chester, reached the printed page as the result of a collaboration between Howe and his late wife, Deborah Howe. "I truly don't have a memory of the exact moment Bunnicula came alive," Howe explained, "but I suspect that he was the result of my watching too many old vampire movies on late-night TV -- combined with my fondness for the Marx Brothers and Sherlock Holmes. The character of a vampire bunny had been floating around in my head for a while, and then Debbie's mother suggested we turn him into a children's book. This hadn't occurred to either Debbie or me, but, since we both loved to write, we decided to give it a try."
So, after clearing the dinner dishes on that fateful night, the couple sat down at their table and wrote the first words of Bunnicula's debut tale on a scrap of paper. "It was truly a collaborative effort," Howe said. "The initial draft goes back and forth between Debbie's and my handwriting. One of us would play secretary and write rapidly as we talked. We would finish each other's sentences. I can identify an occasional passage as mine or hers, but for the most part I can't today recall which of us came up with what."
Since Deborah was working intermittently as an actress and James had a daunting work load (balancing a job at a literary and theatrical agency with various stints as a director of plays, artistic director of an off-off-Broadway theater and course work toward a master's degree in theater), their writing schedule was erratic. "Some days we'd write for an hour, some days for 15 minutes, some days not at all," he recalled.
Sadly, during the course of that year, Deborah was diagnosed with cancer. She died in the summer of 1978, the year before Bunnicula was published. In Howe's afterword to the new edition, he emphasizes how important it was to Deborah "to leave something of herself behind," which he believes this book helped her accomplish.
Evolving as a Writer
Though his diverse interests and activities didn't leave Howe much time for writing while he and Deborah created the initial Bunnicula tale, he believes that his many activities and interests helped to pave the way for what would become his full-time work as a children's book author. "From the age of 10, I was sure I wanted to be an actor and that was my first career," he mused. "But because I recognized that I wasn't that good at acting, I soon gave it up and instead fell in love with directing. But the acting prepared me for writing -- I draw from it all the time. It helps me to stretch my imagination and slip into characters' skins. I think my love of dialogue also comes from acting." And Howe credited his work at the literary agency for preparing him to understand the business side of publishing.
The author appears to have little trouble stretching his imagination. In addition to the bestselling Bunnicula series, Howe has written several picture books, including There's a Monster Under My Bedand Horace and Morris but Mostly Dolores; the Sebastian Barth mysteries; a beginning-reader series starring Pinky and Rex; and The Watcher, a YA novel about an abused girl. Howe's editor, Jonathan Lanman, associate publisher and editorial director of Atheneum Books for Young Readers, called The Watcher "a perfect example of James's talent and versatility as a writer. I would say that he is a very unusual author in that he can write successfully for so wide an audience."
While his books continue to reach kids at many different reading levels, Howe himself will be meeting a variety of his readers in the coming weeks; he is scheduled to speak at two regional trade shows, NACIBA in Philadelphia and the Mid-South Booksellers Association in Little Rock, as well as the Baltimore Book Fair. And with the approach of Halloween -- a "howliday" well tailored to a vampire bunny -- the author will promote Bunnicula Strikes Again! and the 20th-anniversary reissue with a tour to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago and Kansas City. A Halloween event kit, Bunnicula trick-or-treat bags and bookmarks, and an easel-back sign are available to booksellers, who can also reserve one of six Bunnicula character costumes.
Howe expressed a bit of frustration with visits to schools, where he usually addresses large groups of students and has little one-on-one communication with children, and said he welcomes the closer contact with kids that store visits allow. "The adults and kids who show up at bookstore signings really want to be there," he observed, "and I love being able to talk to them. Last time I toured, at just about every bookstore people in their 20s -- some of whom were parents with young children -- showed up and said, 'I grew up reading Bunnicula and the books meant a lot to me.' At first this made me feel so old, but then it hit me that I'm now reaching into a new generation of readers with my books. And I realized that that is very cool."
To the question of whether Bunnicula will strike yet again in the next century, Howe has no clear answer. "The creative seed for Bunnicula is now more than 20 years old, and with time it gets harder and harder for me to go back and write from that place," he acknowledged. "I never thought of this as a series when we wrote that first book, but I have been moved to revive these characters from time to time because I really do enjoy them. And since the Bunnicula books have been my greatest commercial success, there of course is great temptation to keep writing them. But I have to balance that with what feeds me creatively. I want to take more chances, play with form and find new challenges for myself. I have so many book ideas," he added. "They are kind of like planes on the runway waiting their turn."
