Watership Down

Have you read Watership Down by Richard Adams?

Did you know that it is Penguin books' best selling book ever? (According to wiki anyway)

And that oodles of high school aged students around the world have had to read it or suffer the consequences?

How did all these nuggets of information escape me for so long?  I jumped on the every one's read it bandwagon and I'm glad I did.  At first I thought this was going to be another Animal Farm type story, but the introduction quickly told me I was over thinking it.  That this was just a little story invented to keep the author's children from driving him to madness on long car rides out to the country.  Except if you listen to the critics they will tell you that this story has all kinds of great literature undertones (Homer, Odyssey, Aeneid, Troy, Robin Hood).

It's a story about a group of rabbits that follow Fiver, a future-seeing rabbit, away from the home they grew up in.  He predicts the end is near.  They make their way across the countryside to find a new home for themselves.  Along the way, they encounter a rabbit farm full of traps and a militant compound that want to make them prisoners.

So, if you haven't read it, you should.  You're 10th grade English teacher would have wanted you to.  And I won't make you write a report on it.