Green Forest Stories by Thornton W. Burgess (best e ink reader for manga txt) 📕
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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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As the days passed, Boxer’s coat became more and more free from that dreadful scent. Boxer had become so used to it that he didn’t notice it at all, so he wasn’t conscious when it began to grow less. At last it got so that it was hardly to be noticed excepting on rainy or very damp days. For a long time after Mother Bear had permitted him to resume his place with Woof-Woof, she drove him away on such days.
So at last Boxer’s punishment ended. Mother Bear gave him a good talking to and said that she hoped this would be a lesson he never would forget. “Yes’m, it will,” he had replied very meekly, and he knew it would. Then he took his place once more, save that now, instead of following at Mother Bear’s heels, he allowed Woof-Woof to do that and he followed her. Though Woof-Woof didn’t suspect it, he preferred it so.
So Buster Bear’s twins grew and grew until everyone said that they were the finest young Bears ever seen in the Green Forest.
Billy Mink says that these cubs have received attention enough and that there are other people who should be considered. Perhaps Billy is right, though I suspect he is thinking of himself. Anyway this ends the Green Forest series and the next book will be the first in the Smiling Pool series. The title will be Billy Mink.
ColophonGreen Forest Stories
was published between 1921–23 by
Thornton W. Burgess.
This ebook was produced for
Standard Ebooks
by
B. Timothy Keith and L. A. Vermeer,
and is based on transcriptions produced between 2002 and 2019 by
Kent Fielden, David Widger, Tim Lindell, David E. Brown and The Online Distributed Proofreading Team
for
Project Gutenberg (“Lightfoot the Deer,” “Blacky the Crow,” “Whitefoot the Wood Mouse,” and “Buster Bear’s Twins”)
and on digital scans available at the
Internet Archive (“Lightfoot the Deer,” “Blacky the Crow,” “Whitefoot the Wood Mouse,” and “Buster Bear’s Twins”).
The cover page is adapted from
Fall in the Foothills,
a painting completed in 1933 by
W. Herbert Dunton.
The cover and title pages feature the
League Spartan and Sorts Mill Goudy
typefaces created in 2014 and 2009 by
The League of Moveable Type.
The first edition of this ebook was released on
August 25, 2020, 11:07 p.m.
You can check for updates to this ebook, view its revision history, or download it for different ereading systems at
standardebooks.org/ebooks/thornton-w-burgess/green-forest-stories.
The volunteer-driven Standard Ebooks project relies on readers like you to submit typos, corrections, and other improvements. Anyone can contribute at standardebooks.org.
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