Bambi

A Life in the Woods

Author  Felix Salten Illustrated by  Kurt Wiese
Bambi

The novel that inspired the famous Disney movie is a much deeper work of art—a fable of loss and survival set against a beautifully evoked natural world.

This gripping tale of forest life has come to be thought of as a children’s story, thanks to the Disney adapation, but while young readers can enjoy it, it is also a moving contribution to the literature of the natural world. The fawn Bambi, first with his mother and then without her, learns that life in the forest is both precious and precarious. After losing his mother, he grows to become a young stag, falls in love with a doe, and is taught important lessons about the perilous ways of humans by the Old Prince,…