Green Forest Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (best e ink reader for manga txt) 📕
Description
American naturalist and conservationist Thornton W. Burgess was the author of more than one hundred books for children; the best-remembered of these is Old Mother West Wind, which was originally written for his young son. Burgess also wrote dozens of books about the creatures of the northern North American forest, four of which are collected here as the Green Forest Stories.
This Green Forest Stories compilation focuses on Lightfoot the Deer, Blacky the Crow, Whitefoot the Wood Mouse, and twin bear cubs Woof-Woof and Boxer. Readers may have encountered these characters in other of Burgess’s stories about the “little people” of the Massachusetts forest. Burgess’s earliest ventures into animal fantasy are roughly contemporary with Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories and Beatrix Potter’s tales of various animals, and represent the most lasting American entry into this genre.
Animal fantasy is a sub-genre of children’s literature in which animals are anthropomorphized into human-like characters and use language like humans. It is often criticized by those who want readers to experience more realistic representations of animals and the natural world, but animal fantasies engage a millennia-old tradition, in the Western canon reaching back at least as far as Aesop’s Fables; animal characters feature in teaching stories for children (and adults) in cultures around the world. Burgess’s stories are intended for children in the early elementary grades. The challenges and triumphs of the “little people” in his stories will feel identifiable to many young readers, and the snippets of moralizing and authorial commentary interleaved with the actions of the plot reflect a teaching device with a long history.
In the late twentieth century, Burgess fell out of favour with teachers and librarians. This shift occurred in part due to changing tastes in literary style and in part due to a changing society. Burgess is entirely a writer of his time. Most of the animals he depicts are male, and many of the female animals who wander into the stories are more passive and more stereotyped than the kinds of representation preferred for girls today. (Such is not the case, however, of Old Granny Fox, who may be the smartest of the little people Burgess represents and certainly does not lack agency or self-determination.)
The style of Burgess’s storytelling is undeniably old-fashioned but still deserves consideration. Although the writing is often simple and plain, there are rhetorical flourishes that reveal the author’s attention to craft. In particular, Burgess’s use of formulaic expressions such as “jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun” and “the Merry Little Breezes” links these tales to an orality that stretches back to at least The Iliad and The Odyssey of Homer (think of phrases such as “the wine-dark sea,” “rosy-fingered Dawn,” and “bright-eyed Athena”). Through his broader use of repetition and through onomatopoeia, Burgess underscores characteristics of his characters’ real-life forest counterparts—the way a chickadee calls, a squirrel scolds, or a rabbit lopes, for example.
In these stories, as in the Green Meadow Stories collection, we observe features that signal Burgess’s experience as a writer for periodicals and as an early radio broadcaster. Each chapter begins with reminders about the previous chapter, and chapters end with either a strong, propulsive conclusion or a traditional cliff-hanger. The chapters are generally quite short—a comfortable size to read as a bedtime story, and just long enough to hold a new reader’s attention without demanding too much of that reader’s energy. The strong narrative voice sounds distinctly like oral storytelling. One can almost imagine a small group of young people seated in a circle at the storyteller’s feet.
That image captures the essence of these animal tales. They are light, bright peeks into a complex and beautiful world, a world any girl or boy may want to pursue through study or personal explorations. As humanity faces the daily loss of animal species, stories that delight readers and listeners, that encourage them to learn about and respect the creatures of the non-human world, deserve our renewed attention and respect.
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- Author: Thornton W. Burgess
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All this time the Crows were having what they called fun with Mrs. Hooty. Nothing is true fun which makes others uncomfortable, but somehow a great many people seem to forget this. So, while Blacky sat watching, his relatives made a tremendous racket around Mrs. Hooty, and the more angry she grew, the more they screamed and called her names and darted down almost in her face, as they pretended that they were going to fight her. They were so busy doing this, and Blacky was so busy watching them, hoping that Mrs. Hooty would leave her nest and give him a chance to steal the eggs he knew were under her, that no one gave Hooty a thought.
All of a sudden he was there, right in the tree close to the nest! No one had heard a sound, but there he was, and in the claws of one foot he held the tail feathers of one of Blacky’s relatives. It was lucky, very lucky indeed for that one that the sun was in Hooty’s eyes and so he had missed his aim. Otherwise there would have been one less Crow.
Now it is one thing to tease one lone Owl and quite another to tease two together. Besides, there were those black tail feathers floating down to the snow-covered ground. Quite suddenly those Crows decided that they had had fun enough for one day, and in spite of all Blacky could do to stop them, away they flew, cawing loudly and talking it all over noisily. Blacky was the last to go, and his heart was sorrowful. However could he get those eggs?
IX Blacky Thinks of Farmer Brown’s Boy“Such luck!” grumbled Blacky, as he flew over to his favorite tree to do a little thinking. “Such luck! Now all my neighbors know about the nest of Hooty the Owl, and sooner or later one of them will find out that there are eggs in it. There is one thing about it, though, and that is that if I can’t get them, nobody can. That is to say, none of my relatives can. I’ve tried every way I can think of, and those eggs are still there. My, my, my, how I would like one of them right now!”
Then Blacky the Crow did a thing which disappointed scamps often do—began to blame the ones he was trying to wrong because his plans had failed. To have heard him talking to himself, you would have supposed that those eggs really belonged to him and that Hooty and Mrs. Hooty had cheated him out of them. Yes, sir, that is what you would have thought if you could have heard him muttering to himself there in the treetop. In his disappointment over not getting those eggs, he was so sorry for himself that he actually did feel that he was the one wronged—that Hooty and Mrs. Hooty should have let him have those eggs.
Of course, that was absolute foolishness, but he made himself believe it just the same. At least, he pretended to believe it. And the more he pretended, the angrier he grew. This is often the way with people who try to wrong others. They grow angry with the ones they have tried to wrong. When at last Blacky had to confess to himself that he could think of no other way to get those eggs, he began to wonder if there was some way to make trouble for Hooty and Mrs. Hooty. It was right then that he thought of Farmer Brown’s boy.
Blacky’s eyes snapped. He remembered how, once upon a time, Farmer Brown’s boy had delighted to rob nests. Blacky had seen him take the eggs from the nests of Blacky’s own relatives and from many other feathered people. What he did with the eggs, Blacky had no idea. Just now he didn’t care. If Farmer Brown’s boy would just happen to find Hooty’s nest, he would be sure to take those eggs, and then he, Blacky, would feel better. He would feel that he was even with Hooty.
Right away he began to try to think of some way to bring Farmer Brown’s boy over to the lonesome corner of the Green Forest where Hooty’s nest was. If he could once get him there, he felt sure that Farmer Brown’s boy would see the nest and climb up to it, and then of course he would take the eggs. If he couldn’t have those eggs himself, the next best thing would be to see someone else get them.
Dear me, dear me, such dreadful thoughts! I am afraid that Blacky’s heart was as black as his coat. And the worst of it was, he seemed to get a lot of pleasure in his wicked plans. Now right down in his heart he knew that they were wicked plans, but he tried to make excuses to himself.
“Hooty the Owl is a robber,” said he. “Everybody is afraid of him. He lives on other people, and so far as I know he does no good in the world. He is big and fierce, and no one loves him. The Green Forest would be better off without him. If those eggs hatch, there will be little Owls to be fed, and they will grow up into big fierce Owls, like their father and mother. So if I show Farmer Brown’s boy that nest and he takes those eggs, I will be doing a kindness to my neighbors.”
So Blacky talked to himself and tried to hush the still, small voice down inside that tried to tell him that what he was planning to do was really a dreadful thing. And all the time he watched for Farmer Brown’s boy.
X Farmer Brown’s Boy
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