A new graphic novel version of 'Watership Down' aims to temper darkness with hope

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A half-century after the book's publication, the author's daughters sought a team to render the children's classic in pictures but stay close to the text. Enter James Sturm and Joe Sutphin.

by Richard Adams, adapted by James Sturm and illustrated by Joe Sutphin. The 2023 graphic novel is the latest adaptation of the 1972 children's classic.Richard Adams, an Oxford-educated civil servant, was taking his two young daughters on a drive through the British countryside. They wanted to be entertained, and he complied.

"He just said it was a book that was written for anybody who wanted to read it, and that was anybody from those who were so small they could hardly hold the book, to those who were so old that they could hardly see the print," Mahony says.Adams treated his children, if not exactly as adults, then as something more like peers. He took them to operas and read them Shakespeare.

What influence did WATERSHIP DOWN have on you? I'm writing about it for theWatership Down At 50 conference, and looking for stories of its impact & inspiration - especially on writers, but on all readers too...Several publishers rejected the manuscript, saying it was too long for children and that adults would not want to read a story about rabbits.

The film's director, Martin Rosen, said in a recent interview with NPR that he wasn't trying to make a film for adults, nor for children. He was making a movie for himself. Adams died in 2016. By that point, the book had also been adapted for the stage, radio, television and Netflix. A few years ago, the daughters decided a graphic novel version would reach a new audience. They were looking for a team that would stay close to the text, and chose storyboard artist James Sturm, the co-founder of theOne of the first things the two Americans did was fly to London, meet with Mahony and Johnson, and visit the real Watership Down — a gentle hill in southern England.

 

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