But Disney was not the first to market the deer’s plight as a children’s story: the 1939 English-language translation of Bambi’s Children, Salten’s sequel, toned down the violence and gore, to be more child-friendly. Bambi: A Life in the Woods initially appeared in 1922, as a serialisation in the Viennese newspaper Neue Freie Presse, before being published as a book the following year. Perhaps the most crucial difference between Salten’s novel and Disney’s film, however, is that the former was aimed at adults. Faline – Bambi’s love interest and also, in the book, his cousin – appears in both, but she and Bambi are estranged by the end of the original, not living as a happy family as Disney has it. While Salten’s Bambi was far from the cutesy romantic hero of the Disney film, both versions see the eponymous fawn learning about the natural world, losing his (yes, his) mother after she is shot by a hunter, then growing into an adult. Forthcoming horror film Bambi: The Reckoning will recast the beloved fawn as a vicious killing machine
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