A dozen alert readers think my mystery scene is from Watership Down, and after flipping through the book tonight at a bookstore I can almost believe it. However, I couldn't find the scene, and I am sure it's not one of the Black Rabbit or El'arairah stories, and I never read Tales from Watership Down, so I guess if I want to be sure I'll have to give in and reread the book. The baffling thing is, if it really does turn out to be there then I certainly didn't read it as a child. Watership Down was published in the 70's when I was in high school. Yet I've been certain for many years that this scene was from a book I read as a kid. Well, it wouldn't be the first time I got my facts wrong.
Special thanks to Janet Egan for reminding me of Rabbit Hill by Robert Lawson which I haven't thought about in years. I think I must have read every animal-related book in our school library during elementary school, and that was certainly one of them. A cute little story with memorable illustrations suitable for the 4-8 crowd.
Now that I've started reminiscing about all the great books I read when I was young it makes me I wish I'd kept all my Marguerite Henry horse books, and the Walter Farleys, and Jim Kjelgaards. Horses and dogs were what captured my interest after I grew out of talking bunnies and squirrels.
I obviously haven't grown out of my passion for animals, literary or otherwise, but there were quite a few books I read just because I had read everything else on the shelf, and with hindsight I can hardly believe I got through them. For instance, I had a brief mania for books about boys and cars for awhile. I think I'd read all the "girls" books, hadn't really discovered science fiction, and didn't yet find non-fiction interesting. Our junior high library was kind of limited compared to the public library. The fiction section mostly had lots of gender specific novels designed to teach us good manners, social skills, polite behavior, and how to cope with the opposite sex. I got tired of being instructed to "be a good listener" and "take an interest in HIS interests if you want to catch him." A future of passively listening to my man yammer on about football or insurance underwriting appalled me. I started checking out the titles like Hotrod Buddies which now sounds vaguely erotic but which seemed perfectly sensible and okay at the time. I had vague hopes of learning what boys were really like by reading the books geared towards them, but they were just as smarmy and unlikely in their own way as the books directed at me. I don't feel the slightest urge to recapture that part of my literary education.
Tomorrow I am going to visit the public library on my lunch hour and see if they have a copy of Watership Down so I can actually read the whole thing. If my scene isn't there, then I guess I'll post to rec.arts.books.childrens as my friend Dana Siegel suggested, and see if they can help me solve the puzzle. I'm on a mission to fill in the gaps in my personal history.
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