Bambi's Children

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Bambi's Children is a 1939 novel by Austrian writer Felix Salten. It is a sequel to Bambi: A Life in the Woods that focuses on Faline and Bambi's two fawns Geno and Gurri. Although this story was never made into a film adaption, Dell Comics published a Walt Disney Production story in 1943.

Plot[]

The novel's protagonists are the twin fawns born at the ending of the first novel. Geno and Gurri learn the pleasures as well as downsides of nature and their forest home, as their mother Faline raises them to adulthood. Their father, Faline's cousin Bambi, watches over them and, at times, takes care of them while their mother is busy. During their lives, they interact with Lana and Boso, twin fawns of their Aunt Rolla.

One day, Gurri is attacked by a fox, but survives because the hunter shoots the fox at the last moment. She is then taken away by a hunter (known only as “He” by some of the animals; in the English translation, he is referred to as a gamekeeper, and the name has been changed to the "brown He" because of a brown coat he wears, but such detail is never mentioned in the German text). When she is brought to the "He's" place, she meets his dog, Hector, and a European eagle-owl that He captured a while ago. The owl is kept in a cage, and he tells Gurri about the times when He uses him as a bait to attack crows and other birds of prey and shoots them. Then Bambi finds her, and he tells Gurri that he will come every night to teach her how to jump over the fence. But when "He" sees the tracks of Bambi in the corral, He sets Gurri free.

When she comes back, tensions between her family and Rolla's family start to rise. First, Rolla asks Gurri to tell her what had happened, but she was too sad to talk because she thinks that she would not honor her miraculous salvation and Bambi’s effort properly.

Then one day, Rolla gets attacked by a wolfdog, Nero. While trying to escape him, she accidentally lures the wolfdog to where Faline and the others are hiding. The wolfdog immediately turns his attention to Geno, and chases him instead. When Faline sees Geno disappear, she blames Rolla for "sacrificing" her son. After Bambi saves Geno from the wolfdog, Geno finds Rolla, and he is then reunited with his sister and mother. When they see Rolla, Gurri gives her a warm welcome, while Boso starts developing a grudge against them. He starts antagonizing Geno, claiming that his ordeal was greater. When Faline and her children leave, a feud between the two families is started.

When Geno starts to grow his antlers, he and Gurri discover two orphaned male fawns named Nello and Membo. Faline decides to adopt them as new friends for her children, so they can forget about their new enemies. When Geno gets older, he meets Lana again. Boso comes out and challenges Geno to a fight, but Geno refuses. Boso starts to call Geno a coward. Only at a third encounter, when Geno thinks no witnesses are around to see Boso humiliated, he fights Boso and defeats him; he offers a truce, but Boso instead turns away.

One day, Boso is shot by a boy hunter, but before the boy can kill him he escapes. He then runs into Bambi, and Bambi has him use the same techniques that his father, the Old Prince, told him to use when he got wounded. The boy later returns to the meadow and tries to kill a deer from a pack, thinking that Faline or Rolla are bucks, but right when he is about to shoot, Bambi jumps out and charges him down.

In the end, the two families end their feud and become friends again. At the end, Faline lets her children go their own paths. On the final page, she appears to the meadow with a newborn fawn, Ferto. (This sequence, among others, is missing from the English edition.)

Appearances[]

Trivia[]

Bambi's Children was originally planned to be a sequel to the movie Bambi, but it was scrapped.