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Laughing Brook

Animal StoriesThorn­ton W. Burgess (1874–1965) had an enor­mous influ­ence on me. Com­ing out of poor cir­cum­stances, he resolved to become a writer, focus­ing on the land­scape and crea­tures that inhab­it­ed his child­hood around Sand­wich, Mass. By the time of his death, he had writ­ten some 170 books, and 15,000 sto­ries. For the most part, they were anthro­po­met­ric sto­ries, writ­ten as bed­time tales.

They are bril­liant­ly con­struct­ed for the ear­ly read­er. Each chap­ter: This is what is going to hap­pen. This is what does hap­pen. This is what I told you would happen.

I—a city boy—discovered him on the pages of the N.Y. Her­ald Tri­bune, where his books were seri­al­ized dai­ly, chap­ter by chap­ter, along with illus­tra­tions by Har­ri­son Cady. When I dis­cov­ered that I could buy the com­plete books at a near­by used book­store for twen­ty-five cents each, I began to build my first library.

Fred­dy the Fox, Black­ie the Crow, Sam­my Jay, Jim­my Skunk, Old Moth­er West Wind, The Laugh­ing Brook, places and crea­tures that meant much to me. They were the first nov­els I read and I have absolute­ly no doubt that when I came to write my Pop­py books, his vision was embed­ded in me and guid­ed my hand.

When I first began to read chap­ter books to my eldest son, these were the books I read. In one saved vol­ume, on the fly­leaf it is writ­ten, “This is the first book I ever read on my own.” Signed (sort of) by that son. When my grand­kids come to vis­it this sum­mer, I shall read to them from these books. They are still in print, and very cheap­ly too.

 

Just today—it is May, ear­ly spring here in the mountains—I stood beside a tum­bling creek, and lis­tened to its sound. Into my head—after sev­en­ty years!—popped the words, “Laugh­ing Brook.” It made me smile.

For any teacher with young students—a chap­ter a day of a Burgess sto­ry will make you all smile, too.

4 thoughts on “Laughing Brook”

  1. I nev­er read these books, but I rec­og­nized the ani­mals’ names from my hus­band’s sto­ries about his grow­ing up. “Oh yes, Thorn­ton Burgess,” he said just now when I read him this post. “He was the source of most of my knowl­edge about the nat­ur­al world.” His grand­fa­ther, it seems, took the books as jump­ing off point for ongo­ing sto­ries he told about the char­ac­ters. And my hus­band took those sto­ries as the inspi­ra­tion for sto­ries he told our son. A long way removed from the orig­i­nals, no doubt, but I can’t believe Thorn­ton Burgess would mind. .

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  2. Love this! As I said, I read them as I kid. I read them to my chil­dren. And I just had the plea­sure of read­ing them to my grand­child. Read my Pop­py Books, and you will find–I have no doubt–echoes of the sto­ries there, too.

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  3. Thanks for shar­ing! I’ll go to the library to bor­row it this week. Per­fect for sum­mer read­ing w/ my son. 🙂

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  4. Wow! Both Burgess’s sto­ries and the Pop­py series were child­hood favorites of mine, much for the same rea­son: the inter­weav­ing of nat­ur­al his­to­ry and fic­tion in both struck a bal­ance that I found very appeal­ing. It’s amaz­ing and some­what sur­re­al for me to find out that one fed into the pro­duc­tion of the oth­er. I also find it a very real reminder on the web of inspi­ra­tion that con­nects each cre­ative work to myr­i­ad others.

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