My first time being aware of this book was while reading "Wait Til Helen Comes" as a kid (don't worry; it's coming later. See what I did there? Even if I didn't already own it, I'd have to get it so I could make that joke.)
ANYWAY, at one point the main character, Molly, is reading "Watership Down." Since Molly is I think twelve, I assumed this would be more of a children's book, and it's very much not; it's 475 pages long, and it's...just not very interesting. (It has FOOTNOTES, for crying out loud.) I almost aborted this one as well, since ain't nobody got time for boring books about rabbits, but it's something of a classic and I just this second realized I didn't want to be a literary sissy compared to a fictional twelve-year-old. So...I clearly have some stuff to figure out, but at least I can blame it on Mary Downing Hahn. (Other things too; wait til I get to the Hs. HA. Did it again.)
Author: Richard Adams
Potentially objectionable content: Interestingly, all the references to more adult stuff are made innocuous by being expressed in Lapine, Adams' rabbit language. But it's quite violent in places and those passages are in fairly descriptive English, so animal lovers should probably steer clear. It's also very much a book of its time (1972) so there are characters who speak in dialects that are maybe not explicitly racist (though mostly by virtue of being animals rather than people) but are pretty easy to identify nonetheless.
P.S. If you think I'm joking about either the violence or the not-for-kids bits, take a look at this, from the 1978 movie:
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