Tag Archives: Easter

Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories About Easter

A white rabbit sitting on grass next to coloured easter eggs.Two years ago, I wrote Are There Any Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories About Easter?

This is a follow-up to that post that has been slowly compiled over time.

Just like in 2018, I was interested in non-religious Easter stories that fit somewhere into the speculative fiction spectrum.

There were no other criteria. I was totally open to short stories, novellas, or novels. Something written in 1800 would have been just as welcomed as something that was published last week.

So it came as a surprise to me to see what a short list I came up with. The vast majority of the titles on this list are children’s picture books. This was after I trimmed out all of the storybooks about Cartoon Character X’s first Easter. I’m sure they’re adorable stories, but I didn’t want them to crowd out everything else I found.

Children’s Picture Books

These were the picture books that appealed most to me. My parents read The Runaway Bunny to us when my siblings and I were growing up, and it was lovely.

The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown

It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown by Charles M. Schulz

The Story of the Easter Bunny by Katherine Tegen

The Easter Rabbit’s Parade by Lois Lenski

The Easter Bunny That Ate My Sister by Dean Marney

Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy

After coming up with these titles, I had some success with speculative fiction that was written for an adult audience. In order to add this section, I needed to loosen up my “no religion” criteria a tad. Both of their blurbs do make references to non-secular celebrations of this holiday, but they don’t appear to be written in a proselytizing manner from what I can tell.

The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley

The Circle of Six: Emily’s Quest by Dan Sanders

What Would You Add?

What books can you add to this list? I’d love to write a follow-up post if or when the speculative fiction community realizes how much fodder there is in Easter for all sorts of different tales.

Who knows? Maybe I’ll even write one myself!

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Hopping Through Life: A Review of Easter Bunny

Today’s post will be a quick review of the short film Easter Bunny in honour of the Easter holidays coming up this weekend. This film was created by Asa Lucander in 2012, and I enjoyed it so much I simply had to share it with all of you.

Feel free to watch it before reading my review if you’d like. It’s about two minutes long, and the plot follows a small, black rabbit who is bouncing and hopping through all sorts of different environments.

Easter Bunny from Asa Lucander on Vimeo.

One of the things that first stuck out to me about this short film is the fact that it has no dialogue. There is some bubbly background music, but anyone could understand the story just fine if they couldn’t or didn’t want to hear the music. I haven’t seen too many examples of short films like this, so it’s a treat every time I stumble across one.

I liked the fact that this storyline seemed to be created for kids and adults alike. Without giving away spoilers, there were certain things that happened during the course of the bunny’s journey that were definitely meant to make adults laugh while still being totally appropriate for even the youngest audience. It isn’t easy to appeal to such a wide audience range, but Mr. Lucander made it look effortless.

One of the questions flitting through my mind as I watched was why the bunny was called an Easter bunny since the beginning didn’t seem to have anything to do with that holiday at all. The answer to this question wasn’t immediately obvious, but I did like seeing what the filmmaker came up with to tie everything together.

Normally, I include constructive criticism in my reviews if there was something about the characters, dialogue, or plot that didn’t quite feel right to me. I believe in being absolutely honest in reviews while also treating the creator with the same kindness and empathy I always hope the reviewers of my work will have for me. There’s also something to be said for building up a reputation as a reviewer who doesn’t sugarcoat the things that didn’t work for you.

With that being said, Easter Bunny was perfect the way it was. I wouldn’t have changed a single thing about it, and I will be recommending it to family and friends of all ages.  Two minutes was exactly the right amount of space to give to this plot, and I’m glad the creator didn’t try to shorten it down or stretch it out.

I don’t recall ever watching one of Mr. Lucander’s films before. Based on my experiences with this one, I’ll be keeping an eye out for anything else he’s created. He has a playful and creative storytelling technique that I enjoy quite a bit.

Happy Easter and Happy Passover to all of my followers.  If there’s another holiday at this time of the year that you celebrate, Happy _____ as well!

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Saturday Seven: Rabbit Tales

Saturday Seven is hosted by Long and Short Reviews.

Happy Easter to everyone who is celebrating that holiday this weekend! Rabbits are the first thing I think about when Easter comes to mind, so I thought I’d talk about them today. Since rabbits are my favourite animal of all time, it always makes me happy to see representations of them in books, cards, plush toys, candies, and so many other places at this time of the year.

The vast majority of the stories out there about rabbits are bedtime stories written for young children. I genuinely have no idea why that is the case. Today I tried to come up with as many examples as possible of books that were written for older audiences. No one is ever too old to like rabbits, and there are many different ways to write about this animal.

I mean, I’ve been a proper adult for years now, but I still get irrationally excited whenever a rabbit is nearby. They’re such soft fluffy, and often hilariously stubborn little creatures. If not for my unfortunate allergy to them, I’d have at least two or three of them hopping around my house and getting into mischief right this minute.

The Tale of a Fierce Bad Rabbit by Beatrix Potter

Nearly everyone has heard of Peter Rabbit. If you liked that story, you might really enjoy the author’s less widely known works, too. What I appreciated the most about The Tale of a Fierce Bad Rabbit was that all of the naughty things the rabbit did in it happened for a reason. He was a smart little creature who knew exactly what he was doing and why he was doing it.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Make sure you have a full box of tissues ready to go ahead of time. This is a real tearjerker, but it’s also one of my favourite stories of all time. For anyone who hasn’t heard of it, it’s about a toy rabbit who was deeply loved by a little boy. After the boy was diagnosed with scarlet fever, all of the toys in his room were sent away to be burned to prevent the spread of that awful disease.

What happened to the toy rabbit next is why I read this tale over and over again.

 

Zomo the Rabbit: A Trickster Tale from South Africa by Gerald McDermott

This was a story I accidentally stumbled across at my local library a few weeks ago. I’d never heard of the legend of Zomo the Rabbit before, but I loved seeing how he used his wits to outsmart creatures much larger and stronger than he was.

Watership Down by Richard Adams

I know this isn’t the first time I’ve talked about Watership Down on a Saturday Seven post, but it simply had to be included in this week’s list.

The bunnies in this story were courageous and kind. This was almost like a rabbit’s version of The Hobbit or some other epic adventure that required facing many dangers before the heroes had any hope at all of accomplishing their mission.

Disapproving Rabbits by Sharon Stiteler

Many years ago, there used to be a blog called “Disapproving Rabbits” that shared pictures of rabbits looking surly, annoyed, or like they disapproved of everything their humans were doing. That site sadly no longer exists, but this book is a collection of many of the photos that were featured on it back in the day.

The Rabbit Listened by Cori Doerrfeld

The empathy in this story was beautiful. Grief and loss are difficult subjects for many adults to talk about, so I loved the fact that the authors wrote something explaining those things to young children who are even more bewildered by them than us grown-ups are.

Stories Rabbits Tell: A Natural and Cultural History of a Misunderstood Creature by Susan E. Davis

This is a book that I’ve actually been trying to get ahold of for quite a while now, although I’ll almost certainly skip the section about how and why rabbits are slaughtered for human consumption. With that being said, learning more about the history, sociology, and folklore of rabbits appeals to me quite a bit in general.

Have you ever had a pet rabbit? What is your favourite animal in general?

 

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Suggestion Saturday: March 31, 2018

Happy Easter! Here is this week’s list of blog posts, recipes, short stories, and other links from my favourite corners of the web.

The Victorian Easter Bunny via MimiMatthewsEsq. Those of you who know how much I love rabbits can probably guess why I’m sharing this post with you today.

Hot Cross Buns. These sound amazing.

Dehydrated Peeps. Do any of my readers own a dehydrator? I’d be quite curious to know what you think of this recipe if you give it a try.

Easter Bunny Cake via ‪glutenfreegreek‬. This isn’t something I could eat, but I love the decorations on this cake.

A Rabbit Egg for Flora. I wonder if this is what Easter will be like for future generations?

It’s Easter! Time to Do the Bunny Hop! via BlogVintageInn. I’d never heard of this dance before. Have any of my followers done it?

Vegan Chocolate Creme Eggs. Wow, these look delicious. I actually shared a link to this recipe a few days ago on Twitter, but I wanted to share it again for everyone who follows this blog but doesn’t spend time with me on social media. I really need to find some egg moulds and make these creme eggs myself. They’re only looking more appetizing the more I think about them.

The Dark Truth About Chocolate. You should all know that there are several packages of fancy Easter chocolate sitting in my fridge right now that I have been slowly nibbling on and will continue to work my way through this spring. By no means am I anti-chocolate, but I also don’t think of it as a health food. It’s a treat. If you’ll be indulging as well this weekend, enjoy!

So, We’ve Come To This: Peep On A Perch, The Easter Equivalent To Elf On A Shelf. Have any of you heard of Peep on a Perch?

The Last Easter Egg. This was silly, but it still made me smile.

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Are There Any Science Fiction and Fantasy Stories About Easter?

I can think of dozens of science fiction and fantasy books written for adults that are about Halloween in some way. At least the first dozen wouldn’t require me to google anything at all, and I know I’d barely even be scratching the surface at that point.

Given enough time, I could scrounge up shorter lists of Sci-fi/fantasy books about Christmas, Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, and other holidays, too.

I haven’t read any fiction about any type of religious customs or beliefs in a very long time, so the vast majority of the books I’d come up with for the above categories would be purely secular takes on those holidays. For example, Santa and his reindeer would be heavily featured during Christmas, and Cupid would steal the show on Valentine’s Day.

Some of the tales I recommended would offer dark takes on their subject matter in which Santa is a villain or monsters really do come out to prowl on Halloween night. Others would be pure silliness that was obviously written to make adults feel like kids again.

There are hundreds of novels and short stories out there that include various religious ideas. Some of their ideas are based on real religious beliefs, while others are about religions that only exist in the author’s imagination for the purpose of serving the plot in some way. If we expanded the above lists to include books that satirized, explored, criticized, applauded, or even simply acknowledged the existence of various religious beliefs, my lists would only grow longer.

The point I’m trying to make with all of this is that many holidays have been thoroughly explored for the purposes of telling a great story.

So where are the science fiction and fantasy tales about the Easter Bunny that were written for an adult audience? I’ve been wracking my brain over this question this week, and so far I’m coming up with nothing.  The handful of books about Easter as a secular holiday that I’ve thought of were written for preschoolers. There is nothing I can think of or find online that was written for anyone older than the age of six.

This is odd.

Can you think of any?

Is the Easter Bunny too silly a concept for the average adult scifi/fantasy fan?

If I get responses to this post, I’ll either write a follow-up to it or edit this post with everyone’s suggestions. It bothers me that this holiday is being short-changed!

An update to this post was written in April of 2020. 

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