Green Meadow Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (good short books .txt) đ
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 animalsâ Great World.
The animals of Burgessâs 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 childâthis is fiction, after allâbut Burgessâs âlittle people of the forestâ are not simply humans dressed in fur and feathers. The original illustrations in Burgessâs books (by Harrison Cady, not reproduced in this edition) show the animals wearing clothes, but Burgessâs own descriptions of animals are more natural and metaphorical, and less fantastic. For example, he describes Chatterer the Red Squirrel, âwho always wears a red coat with vest of white,â a compact way of communicating the look of a squirrel that many of todayâs children will never have seen with their own eyes. Less pleasantly, it is Peter Rabbitâs fur and flesh that is rent when Hooty the Owl tears Peterâs âcoatâ 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 âNature, red in tooth and claw,â 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 Jackâs 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 animalsâ lives.
Burgess is a clear conservationist in his representations of hunting. The animals are highly aware of hunters and their âdreadful guns.â It is a notable moment in this collection when Farmer Brownâs 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 pairingsâsuch as when Peter Rabbit meets the dainty Little Miss Fuzzytail, the future Mrs. Rabbitâare vague but sentimental and soon lead to proud new families of Rabbits, Ducks, Deer, and Owls. The âlittle peopleâ celebrate the arrival of each springâs babies, mark each otherâs new relationships and homes, play together, and even help each other survive. They laugh, tease, and trick each otherâa fanciful interpretation of animal behaviour that could lead to a readerâs life-long fascination with, and respect for, forest creaturesâand 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 todayâs childrenâs books, Burgessâs sentences have a somewhat old-fashioned cadence, creating the distinct and appealing music of traditional storytelling. Burgessâs 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 âchapter books,â 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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The next day Farmer Brownâs boy shouldered his terrible gun and sent Bowser the Hound to hunt for the trail of Old Granny Fox. It wasnât long before Bowserâs great voice told all the Great World that he had found Grannyâs tracks. Farmer Brownâs boy grinned just as he had the day before. Then with his terrible gun he went over to the Green Forest and hid under some pine boughs right on the edge of that sunny knoll.
He waited patiently a long, long time. He heard Bowserâs great voice growing more and more excited as he followed Old Granny Fox. By and by Bowser stopped baying and began to yelp impatiently. Farmer Brownâs boy knew exactly what that meant. It meant that Granny had played one of her smart tricks and Bowser had lost her trail.
A few minutes later out of the Green Forest came Old Granny Fox, and she was grinning, for once more she had fooled Bowser the Hound and now could take a nap in peace. Still grinning, she turned around two or three times to make herself comfortable and then, with a sigh of contentment, curled up for a sun-nap, and in a few minutes was asleep. And just a little way off behind the pine boughs sat Farmer Brownâs boy holding his terrible gun and grinning. At last he had caught Old Granny Fox napping.
VII Granny Fox Has a Bad DreamNothing ever simply happens;
Bear that point in mind.
If you look long and hard enough
A cause youâll always find.
Old Granny Fox was dreaming. Yes, sir, she was dreaming. There she lay, curled up on the sunny little knoll on the edge of the Green Forest, fast asleep and dreaming. It was a very pleasant and very comfortable place indeed. You see, jolly, round, bright Mr. Sun poured his warmest rays right down there from the blue, blue sky. When Old Granny Fox was tired, she often slipped over there for a short nap and sun-bath even in winter. She was quite sure that no one knew anything about it. It was one of her secrets.
This morning Old Granny Fox was very tired, unusually so. In the first place she had been out hunting all night. Then, before she could reach home, Bowser the Hound had found her tracks and started to follow them. Of course, it wouldnât have done to go home then. It wouldnât have done at all. Bowser would have followed her straight there and so found out where she lived. So she had led Bowser far away across the Green Meadows and through the Green Forest and finally played one of her smart tricks which had so mixed her tracks that Bowser could no longer follow them. While he had sniffed and snuffed and snuffed and sniffed with that wonderful nose of his, trying to find out where she had gone, Old Granny Fox had trotted straight to the sunny knoll and there curled up to rest. Right away she fell asleep.
Now Old Granny Fox, like most of the other little people of the Green Forest and the Green Meadows, sleeps with her ears wide open. Her eyes may be closed, but not her ears. Those are always on guard, even when she is asleep, and at the least sound open fly her eyes, and she is ready to run. If it were not for the way her sharp ears keep guard, she wouldnât dare take naps in the open right in broad daylight. If you ever want to catch a Fox asleep, you mustnât make the teeniest, weeniest noise. Just remember that.
Now Old Granny Fox had no sooner closed her eyes than she began to dream. At first it was a very pleasant dream, the pleasantest dream a Fox can have. It was of a chicken dinner, all the chicken she could eat. Granny certainly enjoyed that dream. It made her smack her lips quite as if it were a real and not a dream dinner she was enjoying.
But presently the dream changed and became a bad dream. Yes, indeed, it became a bad dream. It was as bad as at first it had been good. It seemed to Granny that Bowser the Hound had become very smart, smarter than she had ever known him to be before. Do what she would, she couldnât fool him. Not one of all the tricks she knew, and she knew a great many, fooled him at all. They didnât puzzle him long enough for her to get her breath.
Bowser kept getting nearer and nearer and nearer, all in the dream, you know, until it seemed as if his great voice sounded right at her very heels. She was so tired that it seemed to her that she couldnât run another step. It was a very, very real dream. You know dreams sometimes do seem very real indeed. This was the way it was with the bad dream of Old Granny Fox. It seemed to her that she could feel the breath of Bowser the Hound and that his great jaws were just going to close on her and shake her to death.
âOh! Oh!â cried Granny and waked herself up. Her eyes flew open. Then she gave a great sigh of relief as she realized that her terrible fright was only a bad dream and that she was curled up right on the dear, familiar, old, sunny knoll and not running for her life at all.
Old Granny Fox smiled to think what a fright she had had and thenâ âwell, she didnât know whether she was really awake or still dreaming! No, sir, she didnât. For a full minute she couldnât be sure whether what she saw was real or part of that dreadful dream. You see, she was staring into the face of Farmer Brownâs boy and the muzzle of his dreadful gun!
For just a
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