Book Review: Watership Down
What Parents Should Know
Richard Adams's larger-than-life story is compelling and
full of high adventure, and his characters are vividly drawn
and winning. Experienced fantasy fans cheer the heroes on. This
rousing story of a band of rabbits who escape persecution to
create a just society is full of clever strategies, a
self-contained rabbit mythology, and much detail about
nature.
Common Sense Media Review
WATERSHIP DOWN was written for adults, but adolescents often
find it more irresistible than their elders do. Although the
rabbit characters have a language and a culture, and they
converse and interact just as humans do, these are not
cap-and-waistcoat picture-book bunnies, but fully realized
characters whose conflicts and triumphs keep readers
engrossed..
This is primarily an adventure novel, but one for thinking people. Social allegory pops up regularly, from the restlessness of the warren's disenfranchised younger bucks to the fatalism and repression in two other rabbit communities, whose members have given up freedom for an illusion of security. Readers are expected to engage their brains, even for the suspenseful action sequences.
Adams's conveys a palpable love of nature. He knows the story's countryside setting intimately, and much of his narrative contains descriptions of the landscape and references to specific plant species.
Though this is a thick book, a preteen reader weathered months of read-aloud sessions and became attached to the appealing characters, such as Bigwig, the blunt but courageous warrior rabbit. And when another main character had apparently died from a shotgun wound, she was disconsolate until the reader broke down and hinted at the character's survival.
From the Book:
Once more he climbed up on to the earth pile. Then he
stopped. Vervain and Thistle, raising their heads to peer past
him from behind, saw why. Thlayli had made his way up the run
and was crouching immediately below. Blood had matted the great
thatch of fur on his head, and one ear, half severed, hung down
beside his face. His breathing was slow and heavy.
"You'll find it much harder to push me back from here, General," he said.
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