Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 13 years and 5 months old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

Set in England’s Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of rabbits on their flight from the intrusion of men and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

It’d been a while since my daughter and I read a book together after I abandoned the Redwall series last year. I decided to introduce her to one of my favorite novels from my own childhood, “Watership Down” by Richard Adams, and we just finished it today.

The novel tells the story of a group of rabbits who barely escape the destruction of their home warren after one of them, Fiver, forsaw it in a vision. Fiver and his older brother Hazel lead the group across the country side in search of a new place to live and encounter various hardships and troubles along the way. Their biggest problem, once they start the new warren on Watership Down, is the need for does (female rabbits) to keep the warren growing. This leads to their encounter, and ensuing conflict, with a militaristic warren called Efrafa run by the ruthless General Woundwort.

I was probably in grade school, not much older than my daughter is now, when I first found “Watership Down” in my local library. Reading the book and, later, seeing the movie, must have had an impact on me since I remember much of the story and details as I was re-reading it with my daughter and it was just as powerful some 25 years later (I’ve added the movie to our Netflix queue so we can watch that together as well).

It’s funny, too, how now I could see Adams’ influences in other works about animals, like the Redwall series. The Efrafan wide patrols, for example, seemed very similar to the long patrol hares in Brian Jacques’ world. Our heroes are the rabbits, and the evil characters are the foxes, stoats, cats, etc. Also, the book’s religious, social, and military undertones are more apparent even though Adams claims that was never the intent. As he writes in the introduction: “I want to emphasize that Watership Down was never intended to be some sort of allegory or parable. It is simply a story about rabbits made up and told in the car.”