Maybe you imagine Bambi as a doe fawn, with big, friendly eyes, giant eyelashes, and beauty spots covering her adorable cartoon body. Maybe you’re familiar with Bambi’s little besties, a bunny named Thumper and a skunk called Flower. Maybe you thought Bambi was purely for children, a Disney creation that helped launch an entertainment empire of cartoon classics. Maybe you thought Bambi was a whitetail deer. And maybe you thought the author was a wonderful writer of children’s stories.
BAMBI — MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
All of that would be wrong — all except for the beauty spots. Bambi was a buck, not a doe. Bambi, the cutest caricature of all forest friends, did talk to other woodland citizenry but Thumper and Flower were not among them. Absent from the original 1923 novel, Disney invented the bunny and the skunk for its animated 1942 movie. In the book only deer have names, with one or two inexplicable exceptions.
Bambi was
