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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“Thanksgiving comes but once a year,
But when it comes it brings good cheer.
For in my storehouse on this day
Are piles of good things hid away.
Each day I’ve worked from early morn
To gather acorns, nuts, and corn,
Till now I’ve plenty and to spare
Without a worry or a care.
So light of heart the whole day long,
I’ll sing a glad Thanksgiving song.”
Promptly at the dinner hour Happy Jack appeared coming from one direction, and Chatterer the Red Squirrel coming from another direction. They didn’t see each other until just as they reached Striped Chipmunk’s smooth, mossy log. Then they stopped and scowled. Striped Chipmunk pretended not to notice anything wrong and bustled about, talking all the time as if his guests were the best of friends.
On the smooth, mossy log was a great pile of shining yellow corn. There was another pile of plump ripe acorns, and three little piles of dainty looking brown seeds. But the thing that Happy Jack couldn’t keep his eyes off was right in the middle. It was a huge pile of big, fat hickory nuts. Now who could remain ill-tempered and cross with such a lot of goodies spread before him? Certainly not Happy Jack or his cousin, Chatterer the Red Squirrel. They just had to smile in spite of themselves, and when Striped Chipmunk urged them to sit down and help themselves, they did. In three minutes they were so busy eating that they had forgotten all about their quarrel and were laughing and chatting like the best of friends.
“It’s quite a family party, isn’t it?” said Striped Chipmunk, for you know they are all cousins.
Whitefoot the Wood Mouse happened along, and Striped Chipmunk insisted that he should join the party. Later Sammy Jay came along, and nothing would excuse him from sharing in the feast, too. When everybody had eaten and eaten until they couldn’t hold another thing, and it was time to think of going home, Striped Chipmunk insisted that Happy Jack and Chatterer should divide between them the big, fat hickory nuts that were left, and they did without once quarreling about it.
“Thanksgiving comes but once a year,
And when it comes it brings good cheer,”
said Striped Chipmunk to himself as he watched his guests depart.
XII Happy Jack Does Some ThinkingTo call another a thief doesn’t make him one.
Happy JackHappy Jack sat up in a chestnut tree, and his face was very sober. The fact is, Happy Jack was doing some very hard thinking. This is so very unusual for him that Sammy Jay stopped to ask if he was sick. You see he is naturally a happy-go-lucky little scamp, and that is one reason that he is called Happy Jack. But this morning he was thinking and thinking hard, so hard, in fact, that he almost lost his temper when Sammy Jay interrupted his thoughts with such a foolish question.
What was he thinking about? Can you not guess? Why, he was thinking about those big, fat hickory nuts that Striped Chipmunk had had for his Thanksgiving dinner, and how Striped Chipmunk had given him some of them to bring home. He was very sure that they were the very same nuts that he had watched grow big and fat in the top of the tall hickory tree and then had knocked down while chasing his cousin, Chatterer. When they had reached the ground and found the nuts gone, Happy Jack had at once suspected that Striped Chipmunk had taken them, and now he felt sure about it.
But all at once things looked very different to Happy Jack, and the more he thought about how he had acted, the more ashamed of himself he grew.
“There certainly must have been enough of those nuts for all of us, and if I hadn’t been so greedy we might all have had a share. As it is, I’ve got only those that Striped Chipmunk gave me, and Chatterer has only those that Striped Chipmunk gave him. It must be that that sharp little cousin of mine with the striped coat has got the rest, and I guess he deserves them.”
Then all of a sudden Happy Jack realized how Striped Chipmunk had fooled him into thinking that the storehouse of Chatterer was his storehouse, and Happy Jack began to laugh. The more he thought of it, the harder he laughed.
“The joke certainly is on me!” he exclaimed. “The joke certainly is on me, and it served me right. Hereafter I’ll mind my own business. If I had spent half as much time looking for hickory nuts as I did looking for Striped Chipmunk’s storehouse, I would be ready for winter now, and Chatterer couldn’t call me a thief.”
Then he laughed again as he thought how Striped Chipmunk must have enjoyed seeing him pulled out of Chatterer’s storehouse by the tail.
“What’s the joke?” asked Bobby Coon, who happened along just then.
“I’ve just learned a lesson,” replied Happy Jack.
“What is it?” asked Bobby.
Happy Jack grinned as he answered:
“I’ve found that greed will never, never pay.
It makes one cross and ugly, and it drives one’s friends away.
And being always selfish and always wanting more,
One’s very apt to lose the things that one has had before.”
“Pooh!” said Bobby Coon. “Have you just found that out? I learned that a long time ago.”
XIII Happy Jack Gets a WarningIt matters not how smart you are,
So be it you are heedless too.
It isn’t what you know that counts
So much as what it is to you.
A fat Gray Squirrel is very tempting to a number of people in the Green Forest, particularly in winter, when getting a living is hard work. Almost every day Reddy and Granny Fox stole softly through that part of the Green Forest where Happy Jack Squirrel lived, hoping to surprise and catch him on the ground. But they never did. Roughleg the Hawk
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