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Classic Literature. Juvenile Fiction. Juvenile Literature. HTML: Tales from Watership Down is the enchanting sequel to Richard Adams's bestselling classic Watership Down, which won the Carnegie Medal and the Guardian Children's Fiction Award. Adams returns to the vivid and distinctive world he created in that enduring work, reacquainting readers with the characters we know and love, including Fiver, Hazel, Bigwig, Dandelion and the legendary rabbit hero El-ahrairah. These compelling tales include all-new adventures, with the younger generation of rabbits eager to find out about the heroic age that existed before they were born. Enchanting us once again with stories of courage and survival, the millions of readers who enjoyed Watership Down now have the chance to re-enter this unique and spellbinding world..… (more)
User reviews
"Yes,
But the follow-up is just no good at all, compared to the original. The publisher of my edition of Watership Down has, obviously and hilariously, demanded that the blurb big up the adventure but not mention the rabbits, giving us a band of "adventurers" leaving their "doomed city". But the sequel really is just a book about rabbits. The stories are nearly all unsatisfactory, and unlike in the original, where Dandelion's tales of El-ahrairah have the real ring of trickster folktales, with clever tricks and lots of guile, the folktales fall insipidly flat.
I did like the fact that there's a gesture at addressing the problem in the original, when Hazel appoints Hyzenthlay as another Chief Rabbit, but the story doesn't really go anywhere with it, which is another disappointment.
That just wasn't the case for me here. About two-thirds of the book are filled with folk tales about El-ahrairah "the Prince of a Thousand Enemies," the hero of rabbit lore that worked so well to enrich Watership Down. I think my favorite of those tales here was the first, "The Sense of Smell"--even if it was the one that I felt was most politically correct, and biologically incorrect. (Man has not been the greatest cause of extinction. Look up the Cambrian Mass Extinction of over 500 million years ago. Or look up "Dinosaurs, extinction of.") The first two sections of tales are framed as being shared among the Watership Down rabbits. The third and last section of 8 tales are about the Watership Down rabbits and felt like catching up with old friends, even if this latest outing is by no means as impressive. Oh, and there are references to events in the previous novel left unexplained. So for more reasons than one, if you haven't read Watership Down yet, this really isn't the place to start. If you have and loved it though, as long as you know going in this is a different sort of animal--well, no reason you shouldn't enjoy it.
Mostly I remember this as discouraging me from prioritizing a reread of Watership Down itself. I do want to reread that... but maybe not badly....
The first half is made up of new El-ahrairah stories, which although perhaps lose a certain
I found it really enjoyable to catch up with the rabbits I remembered from the original book, and to see them forging new relationships with other rabbits who have their own interesting story to tell. I’m not completely sure how interesting this book would be to somebody who is not such a big fan of Watership Down, although the stories are entertaining in their own right and don’t rely too heavily on you remembering what happens in the original book. In any case, I loved it, and if you feel like I do about the original Watership Down then it’s well worth a read.