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.
Read free book «Green Meadow Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (good short books .txt) 📕» - read online or download for free at americanlibrarybooks.com
- Author: Thornton W. Burgess
Read book online «Green Meadow Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (good short books .txt) 📕». Author - Thornton W. Burgess
Dishonesty will run away
Where Honesty will boldly stay.
Reddy Fox was in a fix! He certainly was in a fix! Here he was with the fat hen which he had come such a long, long way to get, and no chance to eat it, for Bowser the Hound was on his trail. Ordinarily Reddy Fox can run faster than can Bowser, but it is one thing to run with nothing to carry, and another thing altogether to run with a burden as heavy as a fat hen. Reddy’s wits were working quite as fast as his legs.
“I can’t carry this fat hen far,” thought Reddy, “for Bowser will surely catch me. I don’t want to drop it, because I have come such a long way to get it, and goodness knows when I will be able to catch another. The thing for me to do is to hide it where I can come back and get it after I get rid of that pesky dog. Goodness, what a noise he makes!”
As he ran, Reddy watched sharply this way and that way for a place to hide the fat hen. He knew he must find a place soon, because already that fat hen was growing very heavy. Presently he spied the hollow stump of a tree. He didn’t know it was hollow when he first saw it, but from its looks he thought it might be. The top of it was only about two feet above the ground. Reddy stopped and stood up on his hind legs so as to see if the top of that stump was hollow. It was. With a quick look this way and that way to make sure he wasn’t seen, he tossed the fat hen over into the hollow and then, with a sigh of relief, darted away.
With the weight of that fat hen off his shoulders, and the worry about it off his mind, Reddy could give all his attention to getting rid of Bowser the Hound. He had no intention of running any farther than he must. In the first place he had traveled so far that he did not feel like running. In the second place he wanted to get back to that hollow stump and the fat hen just as soon as possible.
It wasn’t long before Reddy realized that it was not going to be so easy to fool Bowser the Hound. Bowser was too wise to be fooled by common tricks such as breaking the trail by jumping far to one side after running back on his own tracks a little way; or by running along a fallen tree and jumping from the end of it as far as he could. Of course he tried these tricks, but each time Bowser simply made a big circle with his nose to the ground and picked up Reddy’s new trail.
Reddy didn’t know that country about there at all, and little by little he began to realize how much this meant. At home he knew every foot of the ground for a long distance in every direction. This made all the difference in the world, because he knew just how to play all kinds of tricks. But here it was different. It seemed to him that all he could do was to run and run.
XXXVII Farmer Brown’s Boy Has a Glad SurpriseThe sweetest sound in the world is the voice of one you love.
Bowser the HoundFarmer Brown’s boy had an errand which took him far from home. He harnessed the horse to a sleigh and started off right after dinner. Now it happened that his errand took him in the direction of the farm where Bowser the Hound had been taken such good care of, and where Reddy Fox had that very day caught the fat hen. Farmer Brown’s boy was not thinking of Bowser. You see, he had already visited most of the farms in that direction in his search for Bowser and had found no trace of him.
It was a beautiful day to be sleighing, and Farmer Brown’s boy was whistling merrily, for there is nothing he enjoys more than a sleigh ride. He had almost reached the place he had started for when ’way off across the fields to his right he heard a dog. Now Farmer Brown’s boy enjoys listening to the sound of a Hound chasing a Fox. There is something about it which stirs the blood. He stopped whistling and stopped the horse in order that he might listen better.
At first that sound was very, very faint, but as Farmer Brown’s boy listened, it grew louder and clearer. Suddenly Farmer Brown’s boy leaped up excitedly. “That’s Bowser!” he cried. “As sure as I live that’s good old Bowser! I would know that voice among a million!”
He leaped from the sleigh and tied the horse. Then he climbed over the fence and began to run across the snow-covered fields. He could tell from the sound in what direction Bowser was running. He could tell from the appearance of the country about where Reddy Fox would be likely to lead Bowser, and he ran for a place which he felt sure Reddy would be likely to pass.
Louder and louder sounded the great voice of Bowser, and faster and faster ran Farmer Brown’s boy to reach that place before Bowser should pass. The louder that great voice sounded, the more absolutely certain Farmer Brown’s boy became that it was the voice of Bowser, and a great joy filled his heart. At last he reached an old road. He felt certain that Reddy would follow that road. So he hid behind an old stone wall on the edge of it.
He did not have long to wait. A red form appeared around a turn in the old road, running swiftly. Then it stopped and stood perfectly still.
Comments (0)