Merry Animal Tales: A Book of Old Fables in New Dresses

Title

en_US Merry Animal Tales: A Book of Old Fables in New Dresses

Description

en_US This is a hardbound book (hard cover)

en_US By Madge A. Bigham

Creator

en_US Bigham, Madge A. See all items with this value

Contributor

en_US Atwood, Clara E.

Date

2016-01-25T16:29:57Z

en_US 1998-10

en_US 1917

Date Available

2016-01-25T16:29:57Z

Date Issued

en_US 1917

Abstract

en_US Original copyright 1906. Based on La Fontaine. Thirty-five fables, with a T of C and list of illustrations at the front and Suggestions to Teachers and Seat Work at the back. The latter gives morals and manual training suggestions. The morals were hidden on purpose, and the child alone should be allowed to find them (202). This book represents a surprising delight for me. Bigham begins with young Blackie Blackrat's adventures, often connected to one another, which parallel Aesop's fables. Thus he meets a cat and a chicken for the first time, and later his father recommends belling the cat at a mice meeting. When they move from Madison Square to the country, Blackie, runs over a lion! A bit later Mr. Blackrat goes back to the city to give his old friends invitations to a house party in the country, but there in a reunion in the pantry, they are interrupted by a maid with a broom. When they return from the party, the cat first plays dead and then covers himself in a tub of meal. Soon Mr. Bullfrog comes to invite Blackie to his pool, and later Blackie squeezes through a crack into a little storehouse. Out for a stroll, Blackie and his father find an egg and carry it home in the tail-dragging fashion that La Fontaine's illustrators love. His old friend Ringtail goes to the ocean and finds an oyster. In fact he runs home with it clamped around his head! In a rare departure from La Fontaine's story lines, an elephant on parade overhears mouse Bobtail's boasting and shakes him in his trunk, but refuses to give him to the pleading cat. Mrs. Solemcholy lives in a cheese. Mrs. Grasshopper Gay lives in the same field. When hungry she goes first to Mrs. Buzzing-Bee, but there is no answer when she knocks. Stories are sometimes softened: thus Mr. Eagle only steals Mrs. Owl's ugly children and does not eat them. Ducks carry not the terrapin, but Kerchunk the Bullfrog on a stick using the terrapin's shell, which he cracks when he falls. But he walks home in one piece. Some pages are torn, 76 and 191 so badly that some print is missing. This book is a delightful exercise in applied imagination!

Identifier

en_US 3142 (Access ID)

uri

http://hdl.handle.net/10504/78545

Language

en_US eng

Publisher

en_US Little Brown, and Company,

en_US Boston, MA

Subject

en_US PZ10.3.B465 Me 1917 See all items with this value

en_US Title Page Scanned See all items with this value

Type

en_US Book, Whole