By Christopher Garrett
Potential publishers react to a children's allegory of the passion using rabbits and a rat named Judah O'Scary.
[1]
Dear Ms. Treacle,
We are in receipt of your recent work, Flopsy Bunny and the Easter Miracle, and while we applaud your effort, we regret we will be unable to use this work at Genera Sunday School Curriculums. We do have some specific comments on your piece, and we hope you will indulge us by taking these suggestions in the spirit in which they are intended.
Specifically, if we understand your intent correctly, you are attempting to explain the origins of Easter (Christ's crucifixion, His resurrection, etc.) in terms that are more easily understood by children ages three to six, we suppose. In that regard, we must strongly recommend that your protagonist, Flopsy, not be nailed to a scarecrow by a throng of angry Jewish rabbits.
Also, the concept of "betrayal" is a rather difficult one to frame for younger minds, and we would suggest that the bit where Judah O'Scary Rat sells out Flopsy for a lifetime supply of Cheetos be dispensed with entirely.
In general, we would also like to point out that allegory and parables do not merely relate historical events using different characters, but tend to be rather tangential or symbolic in addressing one or two central themes. Flopsy could, for instance, leave her known world in some other manner, but return after achieving, discovering, or striving for some higher purpose.
We wish you every success in your future endeavors, and hope you will consider submitting again to Genera Sunday School Curriculums at some later time.
Sincerely yours,
Squid Escrow, Editor
Dear Mrs. Treacle,
Although we at Genuinely Conservative Christian Home-Schooling Supplies can appreciate the considerable amount of work you have obviously dedicated to your opus, Flopsy Bunny and the Easter Miracle—and acknowledging that this is, as your cover letter states, your "latest complete revision"—we feel compelled not only to reject your work for publication, but also to write you this letter enumerating just a few of the many ways in which your work fails our fairly low standards for inclusion in our curriculum. To wit:
* Ignoring for the moment the near-plagiaristic parallels between your piece and another better-known and better-written tale (i.e. The Velveteen Rabbit), your protagonist, Flopsy, seems nearly psychotic in her single-minded focus of finding the "Warren of Bliss."
* Her encounters with the Scarlet Fever-ridden boy seem cold, particularly when she tells the boy to "heal thyself."
* Her eventual self-immolation in order to prevent Head Hauncho from smiting all youngsters with Scarlet Fever is galling.
* The boy's inability to recognize Flopsy upon her return to this world is not heart-warming, but rather pathetic. We suspect this is because her new incarnation as a grizzly bear is an image that most children find fearsome, and the fact that the boy is blind as a result of his disease does not mitigate this fact.
Although we must reject your work with extreme prejudice (i.e., please do not submit to us again), we are not without hope that you will eventually be able to acquire writing skills sufficient to evaluate your own homeschooled children's creative writing projects. To that end, we suggest you attend an adult outreach writing course from your nearest junior college.
Respectfully yours,
Vane Drano, Editor-in-Chief
Dear Ms. Treacle,
I am very pleased to inform you that Hollywood Press is very impressed with your work Flopsy Bunny and the Easter Miracle, and would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience to discuss publication. As you are no doubt aware from some of the trade-related press, we have been attempting to bring Dean Koontz into our family here at Hollywood, but after reading your "final complete revision," we are convinced that this is unnecessary.
Of course, our editors have several suggestions for making your book as marketable as possible, and these can be discussed during our first meeting. In the interim, however, we would like you to consider the possibility of choosing a different title for the final, published novel. While Flopsy Bunny and the Easter Miracle is deliciously ghastly in its deceptive lure as a children's story, some of our better-read staff would like you to consider instead Watership Down 2: Warren of Hell. While I have not read Watership Down 1, I understand that your central character is a worthy successor to characters in that original work. I particularly like the device of a "chrono-transportational hutch" and Flopsy's aberrant goal of "gathering souls across the dimensions" while she engages in her other demonic tasks. That she succeeds in wreaking so much havoc, and recruiting so many others to her cause in the course of the tale is sheer, gut-wrenching delight.
I greatly look forward to our first meeting, and encourage you to call our main number to set up an appointment at your earliest convenience.
With great hopes,
Arse Magna, Publisher
Hollywood Press