The Curse of the School Rabbit

The Curse of the School Rabbit by Judith Kerr is a funny family story for 5 year olds about a boy landed with a rabbit nobody in the house wants.

What happens

Tommy tells it. His little sister Angie is in Miss Bennet's class, where Snowflake the school rabbit gets written about in English, drawn in Art and measured in both centimetres and inches for Arithmetic. Angie has even invented a Snowflake dance.

Tommy is not a fan. When he had to measure Snowflake, Snowflake weed on him. He is fairly sure it was done on purpose.

Then Miss Bennet's mother falls ill and Angie volunteers the family. She arrives home holding the rabbit and announces it like a circus act.

The timing could not be worse. Tommy's dad is an actor and he is out of work. There is a film part going, and the famous actor who might hand it to him is sitting in their living room waiting for tea when Snowflake wees down his trouser leg.

That, as far as Tommy is concerned, is the curse. No film, no money, and no new bicycle at Christmas. The one he has is about six sizes too small for him.

So he becomes the official rabbit keeper at 50p a day. Which turns out to mean walking a rabbit on a bandage harness across the green before school, in the dark, with a pack of loose dogs about.

Reading it is like having a sensible boy explain a completely daft situation with a straight face. He notices everything. His dad's jokes, the chemist lady who asks awkward questions in a shop full of people, the way grown-ups laugh at things they don't actually find funny. He also quietly knows more about the money worry than anyone thinks he does.

Angie is worth the price on her own. At one point she dresses Snowflake in dolls' clothes and gives it a tea party in her bedroom, in her nightie, with a temperature.

Which brings up the one thing to flag. Angie gets ill part way through. Her temperature goes very high, the doctor comes out twice, and Tommy hears his parents up in the night. It stays in his voice the whole time, so what you get is a boy trying not to worry rather than anything medical or frightening in detail. Even so, if your reader gets anxious about a poorly brother or sister, stay nearby for that stretch.

What to read next

There is a good companion for this one in the library. In Lulu and the Rabbit Next Door it is the girl next door who cannot leave somebody else's rabbit alone, because she can see his hutch from her bedroom window and he never once gets let out of it.