If someone told me, “Hey, you’ve got to check out this great 500-page book about bunnies,” I’d think they were crazy. But that’s sort of what happened long ago, back when I was in high school.

On a basketball tourney-trip, we were at a hotel and I couldn’t sleep, so the clerk loaned me a copy of Richard Adams‘ Watership Down from the customer library. I burned through probably 200 pages before finally falling asleep, but had to return the book before I could finish it. Then twenty years later, I added it to our Siblings Book Club list for 2019, and none of us readers were disappointed….by this 500-page book about bunnies.

This story follows a small group of rabbits who flee their warren in search of better pasture and breeding females. It’s an epic journey that takes the ragtag crew of rabbits led by Hazel throughout the English countryside, across rivers, and up veritable mountains. They befriend birds and fight against a rabbit dictatorship in another warren. They rescue fair maidens and they fight for—and sometimes lose—their very lives. It’s an epic journey worth your time.

If tempted to compare it to other animal-led books like, say, the Redwall series by Brian Jacques, don’t. Whereas most animal books personify their characters with human traits—and human technology like clothes and miniaturized vehicles—Watership Down introduces us to rabbits as they are, naked and trembling animals who dig burrows with their paws, sniff the air, pass hraka, and are intrigued by odd environmental quirks like stone bridges across rivers. Oh, and yes, they also talk; yet still the realism in this book is amazing. I especially loved how Adams described the rabbits’ ability to maneuver underground by smell and feel alone. It’s near scientific!

The fantasy involved in this story is also quite compelling, especially through their nighttime rituals of story-telling. They share rabbit proverbs like, “Our children’s children will hear a good story” (380), and they depend so fully on the legends of their rabbit god, El-ahrairah, told best (if I recall) by Strawberry.

The world that Adams created here is truly beyond compare, and it’s no wonder this book became an instant classic. If you’re still afraid to go outside due to the pandemic, then snuggle up indoors with this wonderful book—500 pages about bunnies you’ll not soon forget.

[For another great Richard Adams read, check out The Plague Dogs.]

©2020 E.T.