October 16, 2023
This action-packed graphic adaptation by Sturm (Off Season) and Sutphin (the Wingfeather Saga series) of Adams’s epic novel maintains the existential gravitas of the original while artistically rendering its wild English countryside and memorable cohort of lean, scrappy rabbits. When Fiver has a vision of a field covered in blood, his brother Hazel leads a group of young bucks away from their warren. On their heroic journey, they encounter rivers, dogs, injuries, cars, and many different types of lapine society—from a group that relies on humans for food and looks the other way when rabbits end up in snares, to Efrafa, a powerful warren that rules with an iron paw. Joined along the way by various defectors, Hazel and crew come into their own, eventually establishing and defending their own colony. Their mythology, which includes a sun god and a black rabbit representing “fear and darkness... and death,” guides them and fuels their bravery. The art manages to be both melancholic and dynamic, just like the tone of Adams’s novel. Sturm and Sutphin effectively convey a world as fraught and complicated as the human realm, yet entirely its own.
Starred review from November 1, 2023
Grades 7-12 *Starred Review* In this enchantingly epic but heartbreaking adaptation of Adams' classic novel, Hazel leads a colony of rabbits on a journey to find a home away from the destructive tendencies of men. One day, Fiver, Hazel's brother, receives a foreboding vision that their current warren will be destroyed to make way for new homes, so Hazel gathers all the rabbits that dare to make the treacherous journey over the countryside to establish a new warren. The group struggles through open wilderness, escaping foxes and other predators and dangerous man-made obstructions to find the place Fiver has only seen in his visions. Once there, they face new obstacles and make new friends with local wildlife that prove beneficial to their survival. This classic story is faithfully adapted into a new medium with beautifully earthy illustrations that give each rabbit personality and new life. Audiences will appreciate the story and come to fall in love with these characters while their hearts break for the struggles they must go through to survive. While fans of Redwall or Secrets of Nymn might be tempted to pick up this anthropomorphic animal story looking for adventure, the underlying commentary on environmental impact provides a deeper, more complex tale that will appeal to older audiences, even on repeat readings.
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January 12, 2024
Gr 6 Up-Watership Down first entered the popular imagination as Richard Adams's dense adventure novel about a group of rabbits establishing a new warren, deftly combining societal critique, rousing battle stories, religious myth-making, and rudimentary leporine linguistics. Illustrated adaptations to date have included an impressionistic, eerie 1970s film and a dry, naturalistic miniseries in 2018. In this, its first iteration as a luscious graphic novel, Sturm and Sutphin seem intent on almost documentary adherence to the original. Mystic rabbit Fiver has a terrible vision of his warren's destruction, and along with brave Hazel and a few others, leaves in search of safer climes. They briefly join a group of rabbits who are drugged in their den and easily harvested by humans, cleverly procure does from a farm, and find themselves in brutal battle with General Woundwort, the authoritarian leader of a militaristic warren. Sturm's and Sutphin's work revels in the natural world: woods, fields, rivers and underground habitats flowing into one intoxicating, verdant dream. However, in its heavy emphasis on the original's complex plot, the characters' identities and relationships begin to blur and the story's conclusion feels somewhat predetermined rather than hard-won. In an effort to be completely faithful to the original, this beautiful adaptation never quite finds its own voice. VERDICT Beautiful and deliberate, this graphic adaptation retells the original story with impressive, exhaustive faithfulness.-Emilia Packard
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