Watership Down
This is one of the cherished books from my childhood, and I recently had the pleasure of reading it to my daughter. She's seven, and she loved the story. And, what's more, I'm much older than seven, and I still loved it. Beautiful, heartfelt, adventurous, and full of stories within stories. Sort of Brer Rabbit meets Lord of the Rings meets 1984. This is book is still magical, though a few of the descriptions of the countryside are, shall we say, long. But when the rabbit Bigwig faces General Woundwort in one of the tunnels atop Watership Down, well, I still had shivers running up my spine. And it's a wonderful character novel, too, even if the characters have fur and whiskers.
7 comments:
I read Watership Down years ago and loved it. Recently, I found it in my attic and plan to reread it this summer. How wonderful that you got to share this with your daughter!
I've never read it although I know my wife really likes this book.
I love Watership Down, too, and it will definitely be one I read to my daughters, too. It's one of those wonderful instances where the prototype of a genre (or sub-genre) is even better than what it's hyped as--and the character development is key to that.
Have you read Maia, or Shardik? Maia is pretty epic. I loved it as a teenager, but of course haven't been back since.
I read Beatrix Potter to our kids, the whole set. It was a gift from a friend.
I've never read Watership Down but my mother read Brer Rabbit to me.
I first read 'Watership Down' a couple of years ago, and absolutely loved it. I think my favorite thing about the book is how you're gradually sucked in to this very full and fleshed out world of the rabbits. Toward the end of the book, there are a few full sentences in 'rabbit', and Adams so slowly and imperceptibly introduces those 'rabbit' words that it wasn't even difficult to read. I was definitely in awe. Now if only my old Spanish textbooks read like that...
http://nickieanderson.blogspot.com/
For some reason I never read this book as a kid, but only a few years ago. I loved it! I wish he'd written more than one sequel.
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