Nighty-Nightmare (Bunnicula and Friends)

Let me start out by saying I am a huge fan of the original Bunnicula story and I would rate it 5 stars. I gave the original to my five year old nephew for Halloween this year and he loved it. It was just spooky enough to be exciting for him without being too scary. Since he was so thrilled with it, I went ahead and bought him the entire series and of course he immediately asked me to read one of them to him - he happened to pick Nighty-Nightmare. It started out fine, Howard is as loveable as ever. From there, however, I was increasingly disappointed. (Let me say at this point that we ran out of time reading halfway through the book so my comments pertain to the first half.) These are the problems I personally had with the story:First: It's a "Bunnicula" story without Bunnicula. Would you expect to pick up a "Nancy Drew" story and not have Nancy Drew in it?Second: Other than Howard, I didn't like the animal characters. Howie I didn't care about one way or the other (I will concede that I may have felt differently about him if I'd read the books in order and was introduced to him properly.) Chester, whose flights of imagination seemed so amusing in the first Bunnicula story merely seemed annoying in this story, for some reason I can't put my finger on. The character of "Dawg" is supposed to by mysterious, I presume, but I just found him to be weird and unpleasant.Third: The premise of this book is just flat out creepy, and not in a good way. A family in the woods alone with two men who are described in a very menacing way, and much is made of the big, scary knife they have. I had to edit on the fly, eliminating any mention of the knife as I read, but unfortunately there was an illustration of the two men as well, portraying them with the knife. Another reviewer mentioned these men and the premise were very much like "Deliverance" and that is also the thought I had throughout. Granted a child will not have seen that movie. But I feel the concept is a frightening one on a very visceral level. A family cut off from help, alone in the woods with two men who are deliberately described in a way to make them appear as psychopaths. Of course by the end of the story it may turn out their intentions are perfectly harmless but I'm not sure it matters. A child reading this book is presented with a very terrifying scenario. A cute little bunny with fangs slipping through his bars at night to drain vegetables can easily be understood as "pretend" or "make believe" - strangers harming families is all too real. I had to edit like crazy mad through the whole story to tone down the psychopath descriptions of the men and the evil spirit hype about the woods.There are other, smaller nitpicks I have. The illustrations aren't done very well at all. Chester tells a "ghost story" in the middle of the book which is way too long, detracting from the flow of the book and doesn't serve any useful purpose to the story overall. Plus, again it suffers from being unneccessarily morbid. It starts out with the mother of the two main characters collapsing and her sons fear she is dying and the rest of it is rather bizarre.In looking at the description I see the book is described as being for ages 8-12 and my nephew at 5 is a little young, but even if he were 8+, this isn't a book I would have bought for him or any other child had I realized it bore so little resemblance to the first. I only gave it 2 stars instead of 1 star to allow for the fact that the second half may have improved. Hopefully the other books in the series are better and this one was just a fluke.

I enjoyed this very much. I read it in one day! I had to find out what happened next. I couldn't put it down! The ending was a surprise and unexpected. I look forward to the next one.

The voice of George S. Irving is irreplaceable. This audio tape is an absolutely fabulous reading of James Howe's work in abridged form. I'm normally not for abridgements, but this is actually an improvement on the original work. Having tried listening to a more modern unabridged recording with a different voice actor I can safely say this is the superior version. In fact, it's the ONLY version in my book :) Utter perfection!

I loved the book ! I read it to my daughter as a bed time story and she fell in love when she read the first book ,so here we are reading this one and the next one.

The Bunnicula series is wonderful. My boys love the books. The cover art on this bood is great and the binding seems sturdy for a paperback. The cover is a little thin but it's a paperback and for the price I think it is still worth five stars. A great read!

have been using this at work for awhile and it holds up to the expensive medical company brands quite well.

Loved this book as a child and it was awesome getting to read it to my kids

My son loves the Bunnicula series and devours them. He doesn't like reading at all, but will consent to reading these and likes them well enough to keep requesting them. I think that speaks well for them!