American Fairy Tales: From Rip Van Winkle to the Rootabaga Stories - Hardcover

McCurdy, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 078682171X ISBN 13: 9780786821716

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 1996

Synopsis

An illustrated anthology of American fairy tales includes both traditional favorites and lesser-known works by Carl Sandburg, Frank Stockton, Louisa May Alcott, and others.

About this title

From AudioFile:

A collection of American tales for adolescents, adults and all serious students of children's literature, this medley of stories progresses chronologically across a century, from Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" to Carl Sandburg's "How They Broke Away to Go to the Rootabaga Country." From the maleficent witch, Mother Rigby, in Hawthorne's "Feathertop" to the ethereal fairy in "The Lad and Luck's House," the characters in each story are made individuals by Taylor Mali. Appealing musical interludes are employed to separate the dramatically rendered stories from the subsequent commentary. However, the lengthy introduction, read by Professor Alison Lurie, and the ponderous afterword, combined with the discussions of each story and its place in children's literature, will appeal primarily to the mature listener rather than to children. T.B. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Kirkus Reviews:

From the pair behind Singing America (1995), a gathering of a century's worth of stories that defy well-known European fairy tale conventions. In an impassioned afterword, Philip writes, ``One of the defining themes of the American fairy tale is this sense that ordinary life is something the fairy tale hero must learn to value and enjoy, rather than something from which he must escape.'' He includes works by writers such as L. Frank Baum, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Louisa May Alcott, as well as lesser-knowns (Ruth Plumly Thompson and the anonymous M.S.B., among them), who penetrated the heart of American culture by creating characters who relied on inner strength and discovery rather than other-worldly magic. Glass slippers, castles, and class differences aside, Washington Irving, Howard Pyle, and Carl Sandburg remythologized the traditional stories by asserting that the challenge and bounty of America provided more than enough setting and inspiration. Whether readers recall these stories from English classes or discover them anew, they will see in the texts the promise and potential of an untarnished America. McCurdy's precise black-and- white woodcuts perfectly capture the idiomatic spirit of stories from Kansas to Kalamazoo to Rootabaga Country, and help Philip make the case for the genre that other collections have danced around without naming, the American fairy tale. With a preface by Alison Lurie. (Fiction. 10+) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 078682171X
• ISBN 13: 9780786821716
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 160
• Illustrator: McCurdy Michael