Mr. and Mrs. Bunny — Detectives Extraordinaire!

As Madeline returns home at the beginning of Mr. and Mrs. Bunny — Detectives Extraordinaire!, she thinks she sees a car driven away by red-eyed foxes. Her parents have been kidnapped, there is a note from the “Enemy,” and she finds a coded file card. The foxes expect her parents to reveal the whereabouts of Madeline’s Uncle Runyon, a renowned decoder. Once the code is broken, they can begin to manufacture Fanny Fox’s Canned Rabbit Products.

Madeline is 12 and definitely frustrated by her vague, hippy, antiestablishment parents who make jewellery, play music and organize Luminara events. Madeline, by contrast, is organized, motivated, hardworking, a good student and very serious. She refuses home schooling, preferring to rise at 5:00 AM to make a long journey to a school where she can get a proper education. Despite her youth, she is in fact the “adult” of her family, providing structure and organization for her oblivious parents. Despite their differing values, she loves her parents and loses no time in leaping into action to rescue them.

By chance she meets Mr. and Mrs. Bunny who are new to the area. Their 12 children have left home, and they are now free to embark on a new career as detectives, complete with their own car and new fedoras. Since Madeline can understand their rabbit language, she forms an alliance with them and they set about tracing her parents in a hilarious, hit-or-miss manner. Mr. and Mrs. Bunny also decide to adopt her as a pet, despite the fact she has such a big bottom, which is hard to fit into their accommodation.

Mr. and Mrs. Bunny themselves are a mass of bunny contradictions — nurturing, dizzy, intuitive, practical, outspoken, logical and illogical simultaneously. Hilarious observations, puns and unlikely comparisons issue from their mouths constantly, and the dialogue will make both children and adults groan and roar with laughter.

“Translated from the Rabbit by Polly Horvath,” Mr. and Mrs. Bunny, illustrated with delightful complementary pictures, is quite the funniest of this quartet of great reads — with not just one but three outstanding characters. While Madeline is our child heroine, taking a stand to rescue her feckless parents from the clutches of foxes, her very definite character is equalled by two charming anthropomorphic rabbit detectives. They have their own logic and their own laid-back way of looking at life and are a perfect foil for Madeline’s serious nature. This is a marvellous romp through a witty and sophisticated story that is irresistible.

Madeline’s parents have gone missing, and she thinks they’ve been taken by foxes. Luckily, Madeline meets two bunnies who do detective work and are willing to help her out. Together, Madeline and Mr. and Mrs. Bunny confront evil foxes, The Marmot and the dreaded Bunny Council in their search for Madeline’s missing parents.