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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It was dreadful for those twins to fight. But they had lost their tempers and there they were. You would never have guessed that they were brother and sister. After a while they were so out of breath that they had to stop.
“What are we fighting for?” asked Boxer, looking a little shamefaced as he rubbed one ear.
“I don’t know,” confessed Woof-Woof, rubbing her nose.
“I—I—guess I lost my temper because you ran into me,” said Boxer.
“I didn’t. You ran into me,” declared Woof-Woof.
“No such thing!” growled Boxer, his eyes beginning to grow red again. “You ran into me.”
Woof-Woofs little eyes began to snap, and I am afraid that there would have been another dreadful scene had not the memory of Peter Rabbit popped into Boxer’s head just then.
“Where’s that long-legged fellow we were after?” he cried. “It was all his fault.”
The cubs scrambled to their feet and looked this way and that way, but Peter Rabbit was nowhere to be seen.
XIV Two Foolish-Feeling Little BearsWho lets his temper get away
Is bound to find it doesn’t pay.
If ever there were two foolish-feeling little Bears, the twins of Buster Bear were those two. And they looked just as foolish as they felt. While they had been fighting, Peter Rabbit had made the most of his chance and the best use of his legs and had disappeared. Where he had gone neither Boxer nor Woof-Woof had the least idea.
They looked this way. They looked that way. They peered under the pile of brush. They even tore it all apart. There was no sign of Peter. As a matter of fact, Peter was far away, headed straight for the dear Old Briar-patch; and Peter was chuckling. The instant those cubs began to fight, all fear had left Peter. He knew then that he had nothing more to fear from them.
“People who lose their tempers lose their wits with them,” chuckled Peter. “I couldn’t have done that better if I had planned it. My, how those cubs have grown! I think I’ll keep away from that part of the Green Forest. Yes, sir, I’ll keep away from there.” And in that decision Peter showed that he wasn’t yet too old to learn a lesson and gain wisdom therefrom.
At last the twins gave up looking for Peter. “I—I—I hope I didn’t hurt you,” said Boxer meekly, as he saw Woof-Woof rub her nose again. “I didn’t mean to.”
“Yes, you did,” retorted Woof-Woof. “You did mean to hurt me. I know, because I know you felt just as I did, and I meant to hurt you. I—I—I hope I didn’t.”
“Not much,” replied Boxer sheepishly as he felt of one ear.
“I guess we are even. That fellow we didn’t catch probably is laughing at us and will tell everybody he meets what silly little Bears we are. I guess it doesn’t pay to fight.”
“That depends,” said a deep, grumbly-rumbly voice. The twins turned to find Mother Bear looking at them. “It never pays to fight excepting for your rights, but the one who will not fight for his rights never will get far in the Great World. Neither will the one who is always ready to fight over nothing. Now what have you been fighting about?”
Feeling more and more foolish every minute, the twins told Mother Bear all about Peter Rabbit, how they had tried to catch him, and how they had lost their tempers when they bumped into each other.
Mother Bear’s eyes twinkled, but she took care that the twins should not see that twinkle.
“You ought to be spanked, both of you,” said she sternly; “and the next time I know of you fighting you will be spanked. I won’t spank you this time, because I hope you have learned a lesson. When two people fight over a thing, someone else is likely to get it. People who lose their tempers usually lose more, just as you lost your chance to catch Peter Rabbit. Now all the Green Forest will laugh at you, and Peter Rabbit will boast that he was smarter than two Bears.”
“We’ll get even with him yet,” muttered Boxer.
“No, you won’t,” declared Mother Bear. “Peter Rabbit will never give you a chance.”
And this is exactly what Peter Rabbit had resolved himself.
XV The Twins Meet Their FatherBeware the stranger with a smile
Lest it but hide a trickster’s guile.
Boxer and Woof-Woof had begun to wonder if they and their mother were the only Bears in the Green Forest. So far they had seen no other. Then one day as they were playing about near the Laughing Brook, while Mother Bear was busy a little way off tearing open an old stump after ants, Woof-Woof discovered a footprint. She showed it to Boxer. Then the two little cubs sat up and stared at each other and their little eyes were very round with wonder.
“Mother Bear didn’t make that footprint,” whispered Boxer as if he were afraid of being overheard. “Who do you suppose did?”
Woof-Woof moved a little nearer to Boxer. “I haven’t any idea,” she whispered back, and hurriedly glanced all around. “It wasn’t Mother Bear, for there is one of her footprints right over there, and it is different. There must be a great big stranger around here.”
The twins drew very close together and stood up that they might better stare in every direction. They were a little frightened at the thought that a big stranger might be near. Then they remembered that Mother Bear was only a little way off, and at once they felt better. They saw no stranger. Everything about them seemed just as it should be. They cocked their little ears to listen. All they heard was the sound of Mother Bear’s great claws tearing open that old stump, the cawing of Blacky the Crow far in the distance, the
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