I spontaneously picked this up when I was roughly fourteen-years-old, expecting a lighthearted tale of farmyard animals (which was the sort of book I was constantly reading at that age) and found something very different. I was haunted by this book. Imagery from it bothered me although I didn't understand why at the time, and this was only intensified by the 1954 cartoon that gave me nightmares for a long time. My memory of the book itself is a little dim yet the impact, the experience remains vivid and it still makes me anxious thinking about it today; the mark of a great book.