The Tale of Mr. Tod
By Beatrix Potter

I've rediscovered this book because I've been reading it to my daughter. It's fantastically unpleasant, involving, as it does, the kidnapping of baby rabbits with a view to eating them. The rabbits who go to rescue the bunnies at Mr. Tod's sit at the back of the house as the sun goes down with all these unpleasant things, like rabbit skulls, lying around. They're in a dreadful place, in the heart of enemy country. Reading it as an adult is a great treat, but looking back, I see that it started me on all my childhood reading—C.S. Lewis, Alan Garner, Joan Aiken, the people I read with such compulsion.