Green Meadow Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (good short books .txt) 📕
Description
Thornton W. Burgess was an American naturalist and the author of dozens of books for children, the most enduring of which are Old Mother West Wind and The Burgess Bird Book for Children. Burgess was a passionate twentieth-century conservationist who dedicated his life to teaching children and their families about the importance of the natural life of the northern North American forest.
The Green Meadow Stories compilation is made up of four distinct but entwined tales: those of Happy Jack Squirrel, Mrs. Peter Rabbit, Bowser the Hound, and Old Granny Fox. Through the adventures of these focal characters readers are introduced to the wider territory of the Green Meadows, the Green Forest, and the Smiling Pond as well as to the animals’ Great World.
The animals of Burgess’s stories are anthropomorphized, undoubtedly, but not caricatured: these are not the twee creatures of Disney cartoons. Their behaviour is explained in ways that would be understandable to a human child—this is fiction, after all—but Burgess’s “little people of the forest” are not simply humans dressed in fur and feathers. The original illustrations in Burgess’s books (by Harrison Cady, not reproduced in this edition) show the animals wearing clothes, but Burgess’s own descriptions of animals are more natural and metaphorical, and less fantastic. For example, he describes Chatterer the Red Squirrel, “who always wears a red coat with vest of white,” a compact way of communicating the look of a squirrel that many of today’s children will never have seen with their own eyes. Less pleasantly, it is Peter Rabbit’s fur and flesh that is rent when Hooty the Owl tears Peter’s “coat” one night on the Old Pasture.
Burgess has tremendous respect for the creatures he depicts, as well as for their natural home. While the presentation of the Green Meadow is hardly “Nature, red in tooth and claw,” it is surprisingly unsentimental. Peter Rabbit, for example, lives a highly anxious life under threat from the many predators who would enjoy having him for dinner; similarly, Happy Jack Squirrel experiences days and nights of terror when Shadow the Weasel discovers Happy Jack’s home and hunts him relentlessly. During a long, hard winter, Granny Fox and Reddy Fox come close to starving, and Old Man Coyote leads Bowser the Hound on a dangerous chase that may result in one or the other dying. Despite other fanciful, sentimental elements of storytelling, Burgess does not sugarcoat prey/predator relationships or the precarity of wild animals’ lives.
Burgess is a clear conservationist in his representations of hunting. The animals are highly aware of hunters and their “dreadful guns.” It is a notable moment in this collection when Farmer Brown’s Boy decides he will no longer use his gun to harm the little people of the Green Meadow and the Green Forest. The stories are also notable in their detailed representation of a largely intact forest, something few children in the twenty-first century will experience.
On the other hand, these are books for children, and they contain plenty of sweetness and light. Animal pairings—such as when Peter Rabbit meets the dainty Little Miss Fuzzytail, the future Mrs. Rabbit—are vague but sentimental and soon lead to proud new families of Rabbits, Ducks, Deer, and Owls. The “little people” celebrate the arrival of each spring’s babies, mark each other’s new relationships and homes, play together, and even help each other survive. They laugh, tease, and trick each other—a fanciful interpretation of animal behaviour that could lead to a reader’s life-long fascination with, and respect for, forest creatures—and for generations of readers, they did just that.
The stories are also more didactic than most twenty-first-century authors would dare to be. There are morals associated with most stories, often attributed to the animal about whom the story is being told. Through this practical teaching, Burgess suggests a correspondence between how animals and humans live; but he consistently clarifies that animal intelligence is different from, but certainly no less than, human intelligence.
Unlike the bouncy rhyming verses of many of today’s children’s books, Burgess’s sentences have a somewhat old-fashioned cadence, creating the distinct and appealing music of traditional storytelling. Burgess’s episodic chapters are eminently readable and particularly come to life when they are voiced by animated reading-aloud. For older readers looking for something different to share with children, or for new readers beginning to tackle “chapter books,” the tales of the Green Meadow Stories collection are a delightful place to discover Burgess and his animal friends.
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- Author: Thornton W. Burgess
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“Perhaps you don’t know who I am. I’m Peter Rabbit, and I’ve come up here from the Green Meadows, and I’d like very much to be your friend,” continued Peter after a while. Still there was no sound. Peter peeped from the corner of one eye at the place where he had seen the two soft, gentle eyes, but there was nothing to be seen but the gently waving leaf of the big fern. Peter didn’t know just what to do. He wanted to hop over to the big fern and peep behind it, but he didn’t dare to. He was afraid that whoever was hiding there would run away.
“I’m very lonesome; won’t you speak to me?” said Peter, in his gentlest voice, and he sighed a deep, doleful sort of sigh. Still there was no reply. Peter had just about made up his mind that he would go over to the big fern when he saw those two soft, gentle eyes peeping from under a different leaf. It seemed to Peter that never in all his life had he seen such beautiful eyes. They looked so shy and bashful that Peter held his breath for fear that he would frighten them away.
After a time the eyes disappeared. Then Peter saw a little movement among the ferns, and he knew that whoever was there was stealing away. He wanted to follow, but something down inside him warned him that It was best to sit still. So Peter sat just where he was and kept perfectly still for the longest time. But the eyes didn’t appear again, and at last he felt sure that whoever they belonged to had really gone away. Then he sighed another great sigh, for suddenly he felt more lonesome than ever. He hopped over to the big fern and looked behind it. There in the soft earth was a footprint, the footprint of a Rabbit, and it was smaller than his own. It seemed to Peter that it was the most wonderful little footprint he ever had seen.
“I believe,” said Peter right out loud, “that I’ll change my mind. I won’t go back to the dear Old Briar-patch just yet, after all.”
XII Peter Learns Something from Tommy TitWhen you find a friend in trouble
Pass along a word of cheer.
Often it is very helpful
Just to feel a friend is near.
“Hello, Peter Rabbit! What are you doing way up here, and what are you looking so mournful about?”
Peter gave a great start of pleased surprise. That was the first friendly voice he had heard for days and days.
“Hello yourself, Tommy Tit!” shouted Peter joyously. “My, my, my, but I am glad to see you! But what are you doing up here in the Old Pasture yourself?”
Tommy Tit the Chickadee hung head down from the tip of a slender branch of a maple-tree and winked a saucy bright eye at Peter. “I’ve got a secret up here,” he said.
Now there is nothing in the world Peter Rabbit loves more than a secret. But he cannot keep one to save him. No, sir, Peter Rabbit can no more keep a secret than he can fly. He means to. His intentions are the very best in the world, but—
Alas! alack! poor Peter’s tongue
Is very, very loosely hung.
And so, because he must talk and will talk every chance he gets, he cannot keep a secret. People who talk too much never can.
“What is your secret?” asked Peter eagerly.
Tommy Tit looked down at Peter, and his sharp little eyes twinkled. “It’s a nest with six of the dearest little babies in the world in it,” he replied.
“Oh, how lovely!” cried Peter. “Where is it, Tommy Tit?”
“In a hollow birch-stub,” replied Tommy, his eyes twinkling more than ever.
“But where is the hollow birch-stub?” persisted Peter.
Tommy laughed. “That’s my real secret,” said he, “and if I should tell you it wouldn’t be a secret at all. Now tell me what you are doing up here in the Old Pasture, Peter Rabbit.”
Peter saw that it was of no use to tease Tommy Tit for his secret, so instead he poured out all his own troubles. He told how lonesome he had been in the dear Old Briar-patch on the Green Meadows because he didn’t dare to go about for fear of Old Man Coyote, and how at last he had decided to visit the Old Pasture. He told how Hooty the Owl had nearly caught him on his way, and then how, ever since his arrival, he had been hunted by the big, gray, old Rabbit so that he could neither eat nor sleep and had become so miserable that at last he had made up his mind to go back to the dear Old Briar-patch.
“Ho!” interrupted Tommy Tit, “I know him. He’s Old Jed Thumper, the oldest, biggest, crossest Rabbit anywhere around. He’s lived in the Old Pasture so long that he thinks he owns it. It’s a wonder that he hasn’t killed you.”
“I guess perhaps he would have only I can run faster than he can,” replied Peter, looking a little shamefaced because he had to own up that he ran away instead of fighting.
Tommy Tit laughed. “That’s the very wisest thing you could have done,” said he. “But why don’t you go back to the dear Old Briar-patch in the Green Meadows?”
Peter hesitated and looked a wee bit foolish. Finally he told Tommy Tit all about
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