Burgess 11 Children's Books by Thornton Burgess

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4554-4654-4
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 325 Seiten

This collection includes  Mother West Wind 'Why' Stories, Mother West Wind 'Where' Stories, Mother West Wind's Children, The Adventures of Old Mr. Toad, The Adventures of Paddy Beaver, The Adventures of Prickly Porky, the Adventures of Unc' Billy Possum, Lightfoot the Deer, and Bowser the Hound.  According to Wikipedia: 'Thornton Waldo Burgess (January 14, 1874 - June 5, 1965) was a conservationist and author of children's stories. Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, 'Bedtime Stories'. He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for the daily newspaper column.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Burgess, Thornton

Leseproben

  MOTHER WEST WIND "WHERE" STORIES BY THORNTON W. BURGESS
 
Illustrations by HARRISON CADY   GROSSET & DUNLAP, PublishersNew York   By arrangement with Little, Brown, and Company   Copyright, 1918, By Thornton W. Burgess.   All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America   I WHERE GRANDFATHER FROG GOT HIS BIG MOUTH II WHERE MISER THE TRADE RAT FIRST SET UP SHOP III WHERE YAP-YAP THE PRAIRIE DOG USED HIS WITS IV WHERE YELLOW-WING GOT HIS LIKING FOR THE GROUND V WHERE LITTLE CHIEF LEARNED TO MAKE HAY VI WHERE GLUTTON THE WOLVERINE GOT HIS NAME VII WHERE OLD MRS. 'GATOR MADE THE FIRST INCUBATOR VIII WHERE MR. QUACK GOT HIS WEBBED FEET IX WHERE THUNDERFOOT THE BISON GOT HIS HUMP X WHERE LIMBERHEELS GOT HIS LONG TAIL. XI WHERE OLD MR. GOBBLER GOT THE STRUTTING HABIT XII WHERE SEEK-SEEK GOT HIS PRETTY COAT XIII WHERE OLD MR. OSPREY LEARNED TO FISH XIV WHERE OLD MR. BOB-CAT LEFT HIS HONOR XV WHERE DIPPY THE LOON GOT THE NAME OF BEING CRAZY XVI WHERE BIG-HORN GOT HIS CURVED HORNS  
I WHERE GRANDFATHER FROG GOT HIS BIG MOUTH
    Everybody knows that Grandfather Frog has a big mouth. Of course! It wouldn't be possible to look him straight in the face and not know that he has a big mouth. In fact, about all you see when you look Grandfather Frog full in the face are his great big mouth and two great big goggly eyes. He seems then to be all mouth and eyes.   Anyway, that is what Peter Rabbit says. Peter never will forget the first time he saw Grandfather Frog. Peter was very young then. He had run away from home to see the Great World, and in the course of his wanderings he came to the Smiling Pool. Never before had he seen so much water. The most water he had ever seen before was a little puddle in the Lone Little Path. So when Peter, who was only half grown then, hopped out on the bank of the Smiling Pool and saw it dimpling and smiling in the sunshine, he thought it the most wonderful thing he ever had seen. The truth is that in those days Peter was in the habit of thinking everything he saw for the first time the most wonderful thing yet, and as he was continually seeing new things, and as his eyes always nearly popped out of his head whenever he saw something new, it is a wonder that he didn't become pop-eyed.   Peter stared and stared at the Smiling Pool, and little by little he began to see other things. First he noticed the bulrushes growing with their feet in the water. They looked to him like giant grass, and he began to be a little fearful lest this should prove to be a sort of magic place—a place of giants. Then he noticed the lily-pads, and he stared very hard at these. They looked like growing things, and yet they seemed to be floating right on top of the water. It wasn't until a Merry Little Breeze came along and turned the edge of one up so that Peter saw the long stem running down in the water out of sight, that he was able to understand how those lily-pads could be growing there. He was still staring at those lily-pads when a great deep voice said:   "Chug-a-rum! Chug-a-rum! Don't you know it isn't polite to stare at people?"   That voice was so unexpected and so deep that Peter was startled. He jumped, started to run, then stopped. He wanted to run, but curiosity wouldn't let him. He simply couldn't run away until he had found out where that voice came from and to whom it belonged. It seemed to Peter that it had come from right out of the Smiling Pool, but look as he would, he couldn't see any one there.   "If you please," said Peter timidly, "I'm not staring at anybody." All the time he was staring down into the Smiling Pool with eyes fairly popping out of his head.   "Chug-a-rum! Have a care, young fellow! Have a care how you talk to your elders. Do you mean to be impudent enough to tell me to my face that I am not anybody?" The voice was deeper and gruffer than ever, and it made Peter more uncomfortable than ever.   "Oh, no, Sir! No, indeed!" exclaimed Peter. "I don't mean anything of the kind. I—I—well, if you please, Sir, I don't see you at all, so how can I be staring at you? I'm sure from the sound of your voice that you must be somebody very important. Please excuse me for seeming to stare. I was just looking for you, that is all."   A little movement in the water close to a big green lily-pad caught Peter's eyes, and then out on the big green lily-pad climbed Grandfather Frog. If Peter had stared before he doubly stared now, eyes and mouth wide open. Grandfather Frog was looking his very best in his handsome green coat and white-and-yellow waistcoat. But Peter had hardly noticed these at all.   "Why, you're all mouth!" he exclaimed, and then looked very much ashamed of his impoliteness.   Grandfather Frog's great goggly eyes twinkled. He knew that Peter was very young and innocent and just starting out in the Great World. He knew that Peter didn't intend to be impolite.   "Not quite," said he good-naturedly. "Not quite all mouth, though I must admit that it is of good size. The fact is, I wouldn't have it a bit smaller if I could. If it were any smaller, I should miss many a good meal, and if I were forced to do that, I am afraid I should be very ill-tempered indeed. The truth is, I am very proud of my big mouth. I don't know of any one who has a bigger one for their size."   He opened his mouth wide, and it seemed to Peter that Grandfather Frog's whole head simply split in halves. He hadn't supposed anybody in all the Great World possessed such a mouth.   "Where did you get it?" gasped Peter, and then felt that he had asked a very foolish question.   Grandfather Frog chuckled. "I got it from my father, and he got his from his father, and so on, way back to the days when the world was young and the Frogs ruled the world," said he. "Would you like to hear about it?"   "I'd love to!" cried Peter. So he settled himself comfortably on the bank of the Smiling Pool for the first of many, many stories he was to hear from Grandfather Frog.   "Chug-a-rum!" began Grandfather Frog. You know he always begins a story that way. "Chug-a-rum! Once upon a time the Great World was mostly water, and most of the people lived in the water. It was in those days that my great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather lived. Those were happy days for the Frogs. Yes, indeed, those were happy days for the Frogs. Of course they had enemies, but those enemies were all in the water. They didn't have to be watching out for danger from the air and from the land, as I do now. There was plenty to eat and little to do, and the Frog tribe increased very fast. In fact, the Frogs increased so fast that after a while there wasn't plenty to eat. That is, there wasn't plenty of the kind of food they had been used to, which was mostly water plants, and water bugs and such things.   "Of course there were many fish, and these also increased very fast, and the big fish ate the Frogs whenever they could catch them, just as they do to this day. The big fish also ate the little fish, and it wasn't long before the Frogs and the little fish took to living where the water was not deep enough for the big fish to swim, and this made it all the harder to get enough to eat. The mouths of the Frogs in those days were not big. In fact, they were quite small. You see, living on the kind of food they did, they had no need of big mouths.   "One day as a Great-great-ever-so-great-grandfather Frog sat with just his head out of water, wondering what it would seem like to have his stomach really filled, a school of little fish came swimming about him, and it popped into his head that if little fish were good for big fish to eat, they might be good for a Frog to eat. So he caught the first one that came within reach, and he found it was good to eat. He liked it so well that after that he caught fish whenever he could. Of course he swallowed them whole. He had to, because he had no chewing or biting teeth.   "Now the Frogs always have been famous for their appetites, and Great-grandfather Frog found that it took a great many of these teeny weeny fish to make a comfortable meal. He was thinking of this one day when a larger fish came within reach, and almost without realizing what he was doing Great-grandfather snapped at and caught him. He caught the fish by the tail and at once began to swallow it, which, of course, was no way to swallow a fish. But Great-grandfather Frog had much to learn in those day, and so he tried to swallow that fish tail first instead of head first. He got the tail down and the smallest part of the body, and then that fish stuck. Yes, Sir, that fish stuck. The fact was, Great-grandfather Frog's mouth wasn't wide enough. It was bad enough not to be...