The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
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Old Mr. Toad was acting strangely, and his behavior puz...)
Old Mr. Toad was acting strangely, and his behavior puzzled all the creatures of the Green Meadow. You see, he was in a hurry, and Old Mr. Toad NEVER hurried unless he was in danger. Where on earth could he be off to? To find out, Jimmy Skunk, Peter Cottontail, Unc' Billy Possum, and some other animals of the Green Forest secretly follow the old gentleman through the fields and woods as he makes his way to a very important engagement.
Young readers will enjoy discovering Old Mr. Toad's destination in this delightful tale by master storyteller, Thornton W. Burgess. Set in the timeless fictional locale of the Green Forest and the Smiling Pool, this book transports today's youngsters to the same world of gentle breezes and lovable creatures that has delighted generations of children before then. There, they'll enjoy the warmth and whimsy of this tale while learning important lessons about nature, the environment, and the "lesser folk of fur and feathers."
The Adventures of Jimmy Skunk (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
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When Jimmy Skunk curls up to take a nap in an old barre...)
When Jimmy Skunk curls up to take a nap in an old barrel, the imp of mischief gets the better of Peter Rabbit. Tons of trouble plague the long-eared prankster after he decides it'd be great fun to see the barrel — with Jimmy inside — roll down from its resting point high on a hill.
Reddy Fox gets the blame for Jimmy's wild ride (as well as a dose of the skunk's "perfume"); Peter gets his comeuppance for playing nasty tricks; and before the day is out, Jimmy Skunk and Unc' Billy Possum go egg-hunting and wind up in a pretty pickle in Farmer Brown's henhouse.
Children will delight in these warm, whimsical adventures that combine all the interest and excitement of a good story with gentle lessons about nature, wildlife and such virtues as courtesy, kindness, and preparedness.
Newly reset in large, easy-to-read type, the text is enhanced by six black-and-white illustrations by Thea Kliros, based on Harrison Cady's originals.
Old Mother West Wind "HOW" Stories: A Vintage Collection Edition
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MOTHER WEST WIND 'HOW' STORIES: ILLUSTRATED EDITION BY ...)
MOTHER WEST WIND 'HOW' STORIES: ILLUSTRATED EDITION BY THORNTON BURGESS
MOTHER WEST WIND 'HOW' STORIES is a wonderful bedtime experience as we enter the world of animals that make their home in the Green Forest. Original storys by Naturalist Thornton W. Burgess with illustrtions by Harrison Cady bring all the forest friends to life. Chapters make this an ideal bedtime reading. For little hands to hold and to love.Recommended by The Gunston Trust for Nonviolence in Children's Literature.Ages: 3-8Look for the Gunston Bunnies
(This book was converted from its physical edition to the ...)
This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.
The Adventures of Reddy Fox (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
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When little Reddy Fox gets too big for his breeches and...)
When little Reddy Fox gets too big for his breeches and steals a plump pet hen in broad daylight, the stage is set for an exciting tale as Farmer Brown's boy pursues Reddy with loaded gun and Bowser the Hound. Fortunately, Reddy has wise Granny Fox on his side and, with some timely help from other woodland friends, manages to avoid an unhappy ending.
As this timeless fable unfolds, children will delight in Reddy's risky antics and the commotion his behavior causes among Johnny Chuck, Drummer the Woodpecker, Peter Rabbit, and the other inhabitants of the Green Forest. Thornton W. Burgess, author of Old Mother West Wind and many other children's classics, was a master at telling a good story that holds a child's attention while instilling an important lesson in the most painless and enjoyable fashion. First published in 1913, The Adventures of Reddy Fox was one of his finest efforts. In this inexpensive Dover edition, newly reset in large, easy-to-read type, it will delight children (and adults) today, just as it did their grandparents.
The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)
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As this delightful story opens, something strange is go...)
As this delightful story opens, something strange is going on! The waters of the Laughing Brook and Smiling Pool have become a mere trickle, causing alarm among the creatures of the Green Forest.
It seems Jerry Muskrat's cousin, Paddy the Beaver, has come south to make himself a new home. That means he had to stop the waters that flowed in the Laughing Brook and Smiling Pool to make a fine new pond for himself and a comfortable home of sticks and mud. But what will happen to the waterways in the Green Forest?
Young readers will find out in this charming tale of woodland adventure, as the gentle, good-natured beaver wins over scolding Sammy Jay and the two work together to outsmart Old Man Coyote.
This timeless story, with original illustrations by Harrison Cady, not only entertains young readers and listeners, it also imparts valuable lessons about friendship, trust, and respect for the environment.
Thornton Waldo Burgess was an American author of children's stories. He was a writer who loved nature and children so much that he wrote about them in books for 50 years.
Background
Thornton Waldo Burgess was born on January 14, 1874 in Sandwich, Massachussets, the son of Thornton Waldo Burgess and Caroline F. Hayward. His father died when he was nine months old. From the time he was six, he worked at odd jobs--picking cranberries, herding cows, selling his semi-invalid mother's homemade candy.
Despite this relative penury, Burgess always maintained that he had had an idyllic childhood. His chores kept him continually outdoors amid the ponds, meadows, and marshes of rural Cape Cod. His early experience of nature and the Protestant work ethic of his mother are incorporated into his stories.
Education
In 1891, Burgess graduated from Sandwich High School. Too poor to attend college, he accepted financial aid from his uncle to enter a business school in Boston. He left that school after one term to work as an assistant bookkeeper for a Boston shoe factory. His letters to his mother during this period recorded his resolve to remain cheerful despite the poverty, his dislike of the job, and also his efforts to launch a career as a writer of verse and copy for various commercial concerns, including a water company and a cereal manufacturer.
Career
In 1895, Burgess got a job as office boy for the Phelps Company in Springfield, Massachussets, publishers of Good Housekeeping magazine and an illustrated weekly, the Springfield Homestead. Within a year he was a reporter and editorial "utility man" for the Homestead.
From 1901 to 1911 he served as literary and household editor for the Orange Judd weeklies, a group of agricultural papers published in association with Phelps. From 1904 to 1911, he was also an associate editor of Good Housekeeping. Under the pseudonym W. B. Thornton he wrote a sports and nature calendar for Country Life in America magazine. In 1905, Phelps published his first book, Bride's Primer, a collection of pieces first published in Good Housekeeping.
Burgess' career as a children's story writer began in 1910. While his son was visiting relatives in Chicago, he included in each of his fourteen letters to the boy a bedtime story concerning the adventures of semianthropomorphized animals who lived in the Green Meadow. The editors at Little, Brown in Boston liked the stories, commissioned two more, and published all sixteen under the title Old Mother West Wind (1910). The book was an immediate success and continued to earn royalties throughout Burgess' life.
The same year Phelps, after selling Good Housekeeping, fired Burgess, who then turned to writing full time, producing Mother West Wind's Children (1911). From 1910 to 1965, Little, Brown published some fifty-four volumes of children's stories by Burgess, plus his autobiography. It was one of the longest continuous associations in publishing history. In addition Burgess marketed thirty-two books through other publishers.
Most of Burgess' books were collections of stories written for newspaper syndication. In 1912 he signed a contract with the Associated Newspaper Syndicate to provide a "Little Stories for Bedtime" feature six days a week. In 1918, after a dispute over serial rights, Burgess moved to the New York Tribune Syndicate (later the Herald Tribune), for which he provided a similar daily feature. This association lasted thirty-six years.
Burgess' writing increasingly reflected his belief that animal stories were the most effective means of instilling good moral values and a reverence for nature in children. He inaugurated a series of conservationist clubs, complete with buttons and certificates. During World War I he used his daily column to encourage children to buy war savings stamps.
From 1924 to 1934, Burgess was also host of "Radio Nature League, " a weekly half-hour radio show on WBZ, Springfield, Massachussets (later WBZ, Boston), in which he promoted wildlife conservation. By 1960, Burgess had retired from writing.
He cherished awards given to him for his efforts as a conservationist. In the subtitle of his autobiography, "Now I Remember" (1960), he pointedly identified himself as an "amateur naturalist. " Although praised for having created a fictional world as complete in its proprietary idiosyncrasy as William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County or Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, Burgess was pursued by the charge that the name of his most famous character, Peter Rabbit, had been pilfered from the British author Beatrix Potter.
Quotations:
Burgess once responded: "Miss Potter gave Peter a name known the world over, . I perhaps made him a character. "
Connections
On June 30, 1905, Burgess married Nina E. Osborne. A son was born in 1906, but Nina Burgess died in childbirth.
On April 30, 1911, Burgess married Fannie P. Johnson, mother of two teen-age children.