Spoofin' Foo Foo: Little Bunny Foo Foo by Cori Doerrfeld

LITTLE BUNNY FOO FOO HOPPED THROUGH THE FOREST.

SCOOPING UP THE FIELD MICE AND BOPPING THEM ON THE HEAD.

Bunny Foo Foo looks innocuous enough, but why is she wandering through the woods with a spiteful spatula and a malevolent oven mitt in hand? And what are all those cute little mice doing with frosted cupcakes?

Why do field mice need cupcakes anyway? Whatever happened to healthy nuts and seeds?

In a lullingly lovely woodland setting, a cute little bunny girl seems to be on a relentless mouse hunt. Isn't that a job for some kitty cat?

It's all a nursery-rhyming mystery.

Little Bunny Foo Foo is bopping mice with her mitt and slapping them with her spatula, snatching those cupcakes and stowing them in her cute little basket. It's a strange scenario to begin with, but when the Good Fairy appears out of the blue to reprimand Foo Foo, she only grows more intense, despite the warnings of the fairy that she's going to become a Monster Bunny if she persists with this mice mugging!

Who's the bad guy here? Well, it seems the field mice started it all by swiping Little Bunny Foo Foo's cute little cupcakes right out of her kitchen, and this vengeful rabbit doesn't want revenge, just JUSTICE--and the repossession of her purloined cupcakes, of course!

Cori Doerrfeld's tongue-in-cheek take on this quasi-nursery song, Little Bunny Foo Foo: The Real Story(Dial, 2012) is certainly the alternative version, and Foo Foo definitely comes off as a not-so-sweet Easter Bunny. Despite the pastel palette of a super sugary preschool read, this bunny tale is really for the more sophisticated primary grade reader who may rejoice at a tart tale in which a supercilious fairy and a bunch of larcenous mice get their, um, just desserts!



Proffer this one along with a more faithful rendition of this traditional nursery song in Paul Brett Johnson's Little Bunny Foo Foo: Told And Sung By The Good Fairy, or Michael Rosen's more conventionally sympathetic version, Little Rabbit Foo Foo, in which the felonious mice become goblins, for a trio of rabbity renderings of this rather quirky fractured fairy tale.