What is not to love this time of year?  Cool weather, colorful leaves, and the excitement of Halloween!  My favorite story for October is Bunnicula by Deborah and James Howe.  I could read it a million times and still find something funny that I may have missed the time before.

Harold, the narrator of the story, is hysterical!  He is just like my dog, Romeo, who begs for food 24-7!  And Chester, the cat, oh my.  My students and I fall off our chairs when read about his shenanigans!  He thinks that the new bunny in the house is a vampire and is determined to get rid of a vampire no matter how crazy he looks!  I’ve called my own cat Chester by mistake when he acts a little crazy.  He wears garlic around his neck, tries to pound the bunny with a steak..yes steak not stake, and wears a towel around his neck to look like a vampire cape to get everyone’s attention.  The poor bunny can’t get a break so Harold steps in to help him.  It is a must read!  Teachers, there are so many different reading skills you can pull from this book.  As far as vocabulary, it is packed with new words for upper elementary so I would stop and explain or help students use context clues when we crossed a difficult word.

Here are some great ideas to use with this book!

  • Genre discussion-  Legends and Mysteries
  • Make an advertisement for a lost bunny
  • Point of view of the different characters.
  • Predict what Chester might do next.
  • Inference opportunities are throughout
  • Cause and Effect
  • Compare and Contrast characters
  • Sequence Events
  • Text Connections
  • Summarize an event using transition words
  • Persuade your parents to allow you to get a pet
  • Concrete Poem of a white tomato!
  • 5W’s- Who, What, When, Where, Why
  • Homonyms- Steak/Stake
  • Write a Parody of one of the events in the story
  • Character Traits/ Feeling words
  • How did Chester’s character change from the beginning of the story to the end?
  • Figurative Language- Simile, Metaphor, Alliteration, Personification, Idiom, Onomatopoeia
  • Lots of Personification!
  • Analyze quotes:  Cruel to be kind.  By hook or by crook.
  • Write a Diamante- change from one character to the next
  • Explain the name of the chapters
  • Research- Rabbit’s diet, Transylvania, Animal Fangs, Vampire Bats
Find the book HERE.
Do you want all of these reading skills and chapter by chapter questions along with a quiz, vocabulary test and unit test?  Click the sample below!

For a free character chart, click on the pic below!