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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Reddy stopped and looked carefully to make sure that Farmer Brown’s boy and Bowser the Hound were nowhere in sight. Then he ran swiftly towards the Old Orchard. Just as he entered it he heard a merry voice just over his head: “Dee, dee, dee, dee!” Reddy stopped and looked up. There was Tommy Tit the Chickadee clinging tightly to a big piece of fresh suet tied fast to a branch of a tree, and Tommy was stuffing himself. Reddy sat down right underneath that suet and looked up longingly. The sight of it made his mouth water so that it was almost more than he could stand. He jumped once. He jumped twice. He jumped three times. But all his jumping was in vain. That suet was beyond his reach. There was no possible way of reaching it save by flying or climbing. Reddy’s tongue hung out of his mouth with longing.
“I wish I could climb,” said Reddy.
But he couldn’t climb, and all the wishing in the world wouldn’t enable him to, as he very well knew. So after a little he started on. As he drew near the far corner of the Old Orchard, he saw Bob White and Mrs. Bob and all the young Bobs picking up grain which Farmer Brown’s boy had scattered for them just in front of the shelter he had built for them. Reddy crouched down and very slowly, an inch at a time, he crept forward, his eyes shining with eagerness. Just as he was almost within springing distance, Bob White gave a signal, and away flew the Bob Whites to the safety of a hemlock-tree on the edge of the Green Forest.
Tears of rage and disappointment welled up in Reddy’s eyes. “I wish I could fly,” he muttered, as he watched the brown birds disappear in the big hemlock-tree.
This was quite as foolish a wish as the other, so Reddy trotted on and decided to go down past the Smiling Pool. When he got there he found it, as he expected, frozen over. But just where the Laughing Brook joins it there was a little place where there was open water. Billy Mink was on the ice at its edge, and just as Reddy got there Billy dived in. A minute later he climbed out with a fish in his mouth.
“Give me a bite,” begged Reddy.
“Catch your own fish,” retorted Billy Mink. “I have to work hard enough for what I get as it is.”
Reddy was afraid to go out on the ice where Billy was, and so he sat and watched him eat that fine fish. Then Billy dived into the water again and disappeared. Reddy waited a long time, but Billy did not return. “I wish I could dive,” gulped Reddy, thinking of the fine fish somewhere under the ice.
And this wish was quite as foolish as the other wishes.
XV Reddy Fights a BattleIt is not the foes that are without
But those that are within
That give us battles that we find
The hardest are to win.
After the last of his three foolish wishes, Reddy Fox left the Smiling Pool and headed straight for the Old Pasture for which he had started in the first place. He wished now that he had gone straight there. Then he wouldn’t have seen the suet tied out of reach to the branch of a tree in the Old Orchard; he wouldn’t have seen the Bob Whites fly away to safety just as he felt almost sure of catching one; he wouldn’t have seen Billy Mink bring a fine fish out of the water and eat it right before him. It is bad enough to be starving with no food in sight, but to be as hungry as Reddy Fox was and to see food just out of reach, to smell it, and not be able to get it is—well, it is more than most folks can stand patiently.
So Reddy Fox was grumbling to himself as he hurried to the Old Pasture and his heart was very bitter. It seemed to him that everything was against him. His neighbors had food, but he had none, not so much as a crumb. It was unfair. Old Mother Nature was unjust. If he could climb he could get food. If he could fly he could get food. If he could dive he could get food. But he could neither climb, fly, nor dive. He didn’t stop to think that Old Mother Nature had given him some of the sharpest wits in all the Green Forest or on all the Green Meadows; that she had given him a wonderful nose; that she had given him the keenest of ears; that she had given him speed excelled by few. He forgot these things and was so busy thinking bitterly of the things he didn’t have that he forgot to use his wits and nose and ears when he reached the Old Pasture. The result was that he trotted right past Old Jed Thumper, the big gray Rabbit, who was sitting behind a little bush holding his breath. The minute Old Jed saw that Reddy was safely past, he started for his bull-briar castle as fast as he could.
It was not until then that Reddy discovered him. Of course, Reddy started after him, and this time he made good use of his speed. But he was too late. Old Jed Thumper reached his castle with Reddy two jumps behind him. Reddy knew now that there was no chance to catch Old Jed that day, and for a few minutes he felt more bitter than ever. Then all in a flash Reddy Fox became the shrewd, clever fellow that he really is, he grinned.
“It’s of no use to try to fill an empty stomach on wishes,” said he.
“If I had come straight here and
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