Bambi, novel by Felix Salten, published in 1923 as Bambi: Eine Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde. The story is an enduring children’s classic as well as an allegory for adults.
It is a realistic, although anthropomorphized, account of a deer from his birth to his final role as a wise and tough old denizen of the forest, struggling to survive against his chief enemy, man the hunter. The close parallel between the fawn’s becoming a stag and a child’s becoming an adult gives the book its moral overtone.
The character Bambi is almost certainly better known as the cartoon hero of Walt Disney’s full-length animated film Bambi (1942).