Laughing Brook

Thorn­ton 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.