Green Meadow Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (good short books .txt) đź“•
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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“Hello, Jenny Wren!” said he. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m resting on my way home from the Old Briar-patch, if you must know, Jimmy Skunk!” replied Jenny Wren, changing her position half a dozen times while she was speaking.
“Ho, ho, ho!” laughed Jimmy Skunk. “Do you call that resting! That’s a joke, Jenny Wren. Resting! Why, you couldn’t sit still and rest if you tried!”
“I could so! I’m resting right now, so there, Jimmy Skunk!” protested Jenny Wren in a very indignant tone of voice, and hopped all over the little bush while she was speaking. “I guess if you knew what I know, you’d be excited too.”
“Well, I guess the quickest way for me to know is for you to tell me,” replied Jimmy. “I’m just aching to be excited.”
Jimmy grinned, for you know Jimmy Skunk never does get excited and never hurries, no matter what happens.
“You’ll have to keep right on aching then,” replied Jenny Wren, with a saucy flirt of her funny little tail. “There’s great news in the Old Briar-patch, and I’m the only one that knows it, but I’ve promised not to tell.”
Jimmy pricked up his ears. “News in the Old Briar-patch must have something to do with Peter Rabbit,” said he. “What has Peter done now?”
“I’ll never tell! I’ll never tell!” cried Jenny Wren, growing so excited that it seemed to Jimmy as if there was danger that she would turn herself inside out. “I promised not to and I never will!” Then, for fear that she would in spite of herself, she flew on her way home.
Jimmy watched her out of sight with a puzzled frown. “If I didn’t know that she gets so terribly excited over nothing, I’d think that there really is some news in the Old Briar-patch,” he muttered to himself. “Anyway, I haven’t anything better to do, so I believe I’ll drop around that way and make Peter Rabbit a call.”
He found Peter in some sweet clover just outside the Old Briar-patch, and it struck Jimmy that Peter looked uncommonly happy. He said as much.
“I am,” replied Peter, before he thought. Then he added hastily, “You see, I’ve been uncommonly happy ever since I returned with Mrs. Peter from the Old Pasture.”
“But I hear there’s great news over here in the Old Briar-patch,” persisted Jimmy Skunk. “What is it, Peter?”
Peter pretended to be very much surprised. “Great news!” he repeated. “Great news! Why, what news can there be over here? Who told you that?”
“A little bird told me,” replied Jimmy slyly.
“It must have been Jenny Wren!” said Peter, once more speaking before he thought.
“Then there is news over here!” cried Jimmy triumphantly. “What is it, Peter?”
But Peter shook his head as if he hadn’t the slightest idea and couldn’t imagine. Jimmy coaxed and teased, but all in vain. Finally he started for home no wiser than before.
“Just the same, I believe that Jenny Wren told the truth and that there is news over in the Old Briar-patch,” he muttered to himself. “Something has happened over there, and Peter won’t tell. I wonder what it can be.”
XXX Reddy Fox Learns the SecretNothing that you ever do,
Nothing good or nothing bad,
But has effect on other folks,
Gives them pain or makes them glad.
Of course Jenny Wren didn’t mean to tell the secret of the Old Briar-patch, because she had promised Peter Rabbit that she wouldn’t. But she didn’t see any harm in telling everyone she met that there was a secret there, at least that there was great news there, and so, because Jenny Wren is a great gossip, it wasn’t long before all the little people on the Green Meadows and in the Green Forest and around the Smiling Pool had heard it and were wondering what the news could be.
After Jimmy Skunk’s visit came a whole string of visitors to the Old Briar-patch. One would hardly have left before another would appear. Each one tried to act as if he had just happened around that way and didn’t want to pass Peter’s home without making a call, but each one asked so many questions that Peter knew what had really brought him there was the desire to find out what the news in the Old Briar-patch could be. But Peter was too smart for them, and they all went away no wiser than they came, that is, all but one, and that one was Reddy Fox.
There isn’t much going on in the Green Forest or on the Green Meadows that Reddy doesn’t know about. He is sly, is Reddy Fox, and his eyes are sharp and his ears are keen, so little happens that he doesn’t see or hear about. Of course he heard the foolish gossip of Jenny Wren and he pricked up his ears.
“So there’s news down in the Old Briar-patch, is there? A secret that Jenny Wren won’t tell? I think I’ll trot down there and make Peter a call. Of course he’ll be glad to see me.”
Reddy grinned wickedly as he said this to himself, for he knew that there was no one for whom Peter Rabbit had less love, unless it was old Granny Fox.
So Reddy trotted down to the Old Briar-patch. Peter saw him coming and scowled, for he guessed right away what Reddy was coming for, and he made ready to answer all Reddy’s questions and still tell him nothing, as he had with all the others who had called.
But Reddy asked no questions. He didn’t once mention the fact that he had heard there was news in the Old Briar-patch. He didn’t once speak of Jenny Wren. He just talked about the weather and the Old Pasture, where Peter had made such a long visit, and all the time was as
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