Farmers’ anger at the planned dismantling of tax breaks has not yet completely subsided, but they already have a new target for their anger: Entertainer Anke Engelke is currently having to listen to heavy criticism for her version of the children’s book classic “The Bunny School”. She has fundamentally overhauled the old story and wants to “shake up old role models” and end “the enmity between the hare and the fox,” as it says on the publisher’s website. The fox here is vegan and loves carrots more than anything.
In “The New Bunny School” the danger no longer comes from the animal, but from the farmers who spray poison in the fields and chop up small animals with the combine harvester. It is hardly surprising that this variant is not particularly well received by farmers. As usual, the criticism from their ranks is harsh. “To be honest, I’m stunned,” Saxony’s farmers’ president Torsten Krawczyk told the “Freie Presse”.
The book “completely rejects reality,” he told the daily newspaper. “This is absolutely uneducational. How are our children supposed to learn to take care of nature in the future if they are fed such nonsense?” There are herbivores and carnivores in nature, and both have their place.
The book had already been attacked in the “Bavarian Agricultural Weekly” in February, where there was talk of “insulting an entire profession.” In the new edition, children learned: “Farmers poison the environment, hunters shoot cute animals dead and combine harvesters are dangerous things from the devil.”
Generations of children have grown up with the classic “The Bunny School”. The story by Albert Sixtus was first published in 1924 and tells in rhymes about the everyday school life of two rabbits, the siblings Hans and Grete, who, among other things, learn at school how to paint Easter eggs – and are warned about the evil fox.
According to Engelke, it was the publisher’s idea to describe agriculture as the main enemy of animals. The story had to contain “a conflict or danger”. She didn’t want to take away from the children the idea that it would be nice to become a farmer later. “But I had to accept making people into bogeymen for the sake of the story.”
Sources: “Freie Presse” (paid content), Thienemann Verlag, “Bayerisches Agrarliches Wochenblatt”; “Southgerman newspaper”
