Bunny and Clyde: (A Funny Early Chapter Book Featuring Animal Friends and Silly Adventures - For Kids Ages 5-8 in Grades K-3)

by Megan McDonald, Scott Nash (Illustrator)

Overview

Two New York Times best-selling creators—Megan McDonald, author of the Judy Moody series, and lauded illustrator Scott Nash—team up for a droll comedy about an endearingly inept pair of outlaws.

Get ready for a wild ride with Bunny and Clyde! These by-the-rules buddies, a rabbit and a chipmunk, are sick and tired of being good. For once, they want to know what it’s like to be baddies—rotten to the core! They want thrills and excitement! But to get really good at being bad, they’re going to need some experience. What if the dastardly duo started returning library books late on purpose? Or borrowing markers without asking? Everyone knows it’s a swift downhill slide from there—as long as there’s an unprotected piggy bank in town! Unless, of course, their best attempts at mastering bad deeds are strangely misconstrued . . . Author Megan McDonald brings her quick wit and ear for dialogue, matched by Scott Nash’s deft animal characterizations, to a hilarious caper of criminal intentions gone awry.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536228731
Publisher:	Candlewick Press
Publication date:	03/12/2024
Series:	Bunny and Clyde
Pages:	128
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 7.80(h) x 0.80(d)
Lexile:	510L (what's this?)
Age Range:	5 - 8 Years

About the Author

Megan McDonald is the author of the popular Judy Moody and Stink series for older readers and the Judy Moody and Friends series for beginning readers. She has also written many other chapter books and picture books for children. Megan McDonald lives in California.

Scott Nash is the creator of the illustrated middle-grade novel The High-Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate and the early reader Tuff Fluff and is the illustrator of many other children’s books. In 2016, he and Nancy Gibson-Nash founded Illustration Institute. Scott Nash lives on Peaks Island off the coast of Maine.

Read an Excerpt

-1-
No Good
Bunny and Clyde were tired of being good.
   Every day Maw-Maw kissed Bunny and said, “Be good.” So Bunny was.
   Every day Paw-Paw hugged Clyde and said, “Mind your manners.” So Clyde did.
   Every day at school, their teacher told them, “Raise your hands! Follow directions! Use inside voices!” So they did.
   But Bunny and Clyde were tired of making their beds. They were tired of saying please and thank you. They were tired of keeping burps to themselves.
   They were done playing nice. They were done being told what to do.
   One morning on their way down the sidewalk, Bunny spotted a bubble gum comic. She picked it up. Clyde spotted an old bottle cap. He picked it up. Along came Old Lady Murphy. She patted each of them on the head and said, “What a pair of good little bunnies!”
   Bunny hated being patted on the head. Clyde hated being called a good little bunny. He was a chipmunk!
   “She thinks we’re picking up trash,” said Clyde.
   “She doesn’t even know we’re treasure hunting,” said Bunny.
   And so on that one perfect Minnesota morning, Bunny said to Clyde, “Let’s be bad for once!”
   “Bad to the bone,” said Clyde.
   There was only one problem. Up to now, Bunny and Clyde had always been good. The two goodniks did not have the first clue how to be bad.
   But they did know one thing. When a baffled bunny was looking to learn something, when a curious chipmunk needed information, there was only one place to go.
   “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Bunny.
   “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” asked Clyde.
   “To the library!” said Bunny and Clyde at the same time.
 
-2-
Bad Books
Bunny and Clyde grabbed their library cards and the i ª reading tote. They hopped on their shiny red tandem bike and pedaled to the library. Racing up the steps and through the big glass door, they found their friend Rowena working at the front desk.
   “Rowena!” said Bunny, sidling up to the counter. “Do you have any, um, bad books?”
   Rowena was loading books onto a cart. “As a famous writer once said, ‘Life is too short for bad books.’ I like to think that the library is full of good books.”
   “Just point us to the bad section,” said Bunny. She almost added please but caught herself just in time.
   “Yeah, there must be books with bad stuff somewhere in this joint,” said Clyde.
   Rowena looked stumped. And someone who works in a library is almost never stumped.
   She hemmed and hawed and hawed and hemmed and scratched her head with her wing. “Aha!” she said at last. “Follow me.”
   Rowena led them through the stacks to a row marked 500. “Try the 551s.”
   As soon as Rowena left, Bunny and Clyde pawed through the books on the shelves. Volcanoes! Earthquakes! Hurricanes! Tornadoes!
   “Bad, bad, bad, and bad,” said Bunny.
   “But not the kind of bad we’re looking for,” said Clyde.
   They were about to give up when Clyde noticed mountains of picture books scattered all over the floor of the library’s Young Readers room.
   “What a mess!” said Clyde.
   “These books should be lined up on the shelves,” said Bunny. “Spine out!”
   “Maybe there are bad books somewhere in this mess,” said Clyde.
   Bunny hunted through heaps and heaps of books. Clyde pored over piles and piles of books. “All these books have good and love and hugs in the titles.”
   “All these books have pink unicorns and sparkly rainbows,” said Bunny.
   Bunny and Clyde dug to the bottom of the biggest pile. At last!
   They took their haul up to the front counter. “Wow!” said Rowena. “You two are my best readers. Let’s see what we have here.”
   Rowena clucked as she checked out their books. “Hmm. Interesting choices. Some bunny’s up to some hijinks,” she said with a twinkle.
   Bunny flushed pink all the way to the tips of her ears. A shifty-eyed Clyde shuffled his feet.
   Bunny hurried to hide the loot in the i ª reading tote. Clyde plunked down five pennies for a bookmark.
   Rowena picked up a penny and studied the back of it. “Hey! This is a whole-wheat penny. These are rare, like a hundred years old. I bet it’s worth a pretty penny!”
   Bunny and Clyde were only half-listening.
   “This is going in my piggy bank at home. You’re welcome to come see it anytime. It’s almost full, but I’m sure I can squeeze in one more.” She pulled a penny from her pocket to replace it.
“Happy reading!” she called, but Bunny and Clyde were already out the door, on their way to being bad.

Editorial Reviews

The clever plot is anchored by Bunny and Clyde’s Hollywood gangster-speak, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, and groan-worthy puns, all of which will charm young readers. . . . Being bad is work. Delightful.
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Bunny and Clyde’s schemes—facilitated by bouncy, fast-paced plotting from McDonald (the Judy Moody series) and boldly expressive art from Nash (I’m Afraid Your Teddy Is in the Principal’s Office)—prove amusing, and the characters’ independence, alongside their sassy banter, will appeal to young readers.
—Publishers Weekly

Do-gooders Bunny and Clyde are fed up with playing nice, so the rabbit and the chipmunk set their sights on being as bad as possible. . . . The stakes are low, the action breezy, and the gentle humor reminiscent of Frog and Toad, making this an excellent next read for lovers of those books. . . . Chapters are nicely episodic for budding readers, and the friends’ shenanigans are perfectly paced within each section, providing quick but useful breathers for those kids just building up to chapter books.
—The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

McDonald, of Judy Moody and Stink fame, is clearly having fun in her new chapter-book series, which is packed with humorous situations, puns, and old-timey gangster slang. The black-and white illustrations lean into the overarching joke that the friends are “goodniks” in spite of themselves. A criminally charming new series for fans of Kara LaReau’s Infamous Ratsos books.
—Booklist

From the Publisher

★ 2023-12-16
An anthropomorphic bunny and chipmunk set out to be bad.

Bunny and Clyde are tired of being good, tired of “saying please and thank you,” tired of “keeping burps to themselves.” They ask the librarian, a robin named Rowena, to show them the “bad section”; she points them to the tornadoes and hurricanes books—not quite what they were looking for. But then they discover the picture books Interrupting Chicken and Bad Kitty—now here’s bad! Inspired, they mess up Bunny’s tidy room, putting her books in “un-alphabetical order” and coloring on the walls. Undaunted—even after Bunny’s Maw-Maw makes them clean up—they hole up in their shed hideout, thinking up more ways to be bad. But when they pull up the flowers in Darby the squirrel’s yard, she thanks them for getting rid of her pesky dandelions. And after, under cover of darkness, they wrap toilet paper all around Thornton the possum’s prize roses, he tells them how grateful he is that they’ve saved his flowers from the unexpected frost. And when they scheme to take the pennies out of Rowena’s piggy bank…well, readers will just have to find out for themselves how that goes down. The clever plot is anchored by Bunny and Clyde’s Hollywood gangster-speak, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, and groan-worthy puns, all of which will charm young readers. The illustrations are well placed for visual interest. Final art not seen.

Being bad is work. Delightful. (Chapter book. 5-9)

Kirkus Reviews