Animal Logic

BAMBI--A Life in the Woods--Felix Salten--Simon and Schuster ($2.50). Painful in the extreme are animals that talk. Among long-standing exceptions are Aesop's menagerie with their impressive wit, and Br'er Rabbit with his ingenuity. Boasting no such qualifications, Bambi, straightforward story of animal life, is nevertheless another worthy exception. And though the story will also be read to children, the Book-of-the-Month Club has offered it to its subscribers, adults. For aside from interesting data on wild animals (which, not being the very wild animals of Safari, will not be of general interest) Bambi has dramatic impulse and charming philosophy.

Dramatic in the life of Bambi is his first passionate fight, antler-locked with a rival buck, for Faline, sleek and lovely mate. Dramatic is the first fleeting encounter with his father, aristocrat of animals. And not till he has proved himself worthy of his father's company does the old stag lead Bambi to a solitary haunt, and teach him the necessity of aloneness. He shows him a poacher lying foolishly shot to the ground, forces Bambi to realize that man is not all-powerful, as fawns and silly does suppose, but that there must be a higher power over all.