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I loved this book. Short stories that teach quite a bit about many different kinds of birds. I learned a lot from it. This one was harder for Gabe to narrate, but he loved coloring the birds as I read.
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The Burgess Bird Book for Children
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Parents, teachers, and young readers all over the world have enthusiastically welcomed the Dover reprints of Thornton Burgess's classic nature books, including the perennial bestseller, The Adventures of Peter Cottontail. In the present volume, the author's goal of introducing children to the fascinating subject of bird life is brilliantly realized in story fashion. While "interviewing" Slaty the Junco, Redwing the Blackbird, Melody the Wood Thrush, Spooky the Screech Owl, and dozens of other common birds, our guides, Peter Rabbit and saucy Jenny Wren — and, of course, the reader — learn about their physical appearances, eating and nesting habits, and songs and calls. Over eighty years after its first publication, the book remains noteworthy and valuable for its extraordinarily successful blend of information and entertainment.
260 pages, Paperback
First published October 1,1919
This edition
- Format
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260 pages, Paperback
- Published
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April 23, 2003 by Dover Publications
- ISBN
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9780486428406
- ASIN
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0486428400
- Language
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English
About the author
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Thornton W. (Waldo) Burgess (1874-1965), American author, naturalist and conservationist, wrote popular children's stories including the Old Mother West Wind (1910) series. He would go on to write more than 100 books and thousands of short-stories during his lifetime.
Thornton 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.
Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Burgess was the son of Caroline F. Haywood and Thornton W. Burgess Sr., a direct descendant of Thomas Burgess, one of the first Sandwich settlers in 1637. Thornton W. Burgess, Sr., died the same year his son was born, and the young Thornton Burgess was brought up by his mother in Sandwich. They both lived in humble circumstances with relatives or paying rent. As a youth, he worked year round in order to earn money. Some of his jobs included tending cows, picking trailing arbutus or berries, shipping water lilies from local ponds, selling candy and trapping muskrats. William C. Chipman, one of his employers, lived on Discovery Hill Road, a wildlife habitat of woodland and wetland. This habitat became the setting of many stories in which Burgess refers to Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch.
Graduating from Sandwich High School in 1891, Burgess briefly attended a business college in Boston from 1892 to 1893, living in Somerville, Massachusetts, at that time. But he disliked studying business and wanted to write. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he took a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. His first stories were written under the pen name W. B. Thornton.
Burgess married Nina Osborne in 1905, but she died only a year later, leaving him to raise their son alone. It is said that he began writing bedtime stories to entertain his young son, Thornton III. Burgess remarried in 1911; his wife Fannie had two children by a previous marriage. The couple later bought a home in Hampden, Massachusetts, in 1925 that became Burgess' permanent residence in 1957. His second wife died in August 1950. Burgess returned frequently to Sandwich, which he always claimed as his birthplace and spiritual home.
In 1960, Burgess published his last book, "Now I Remember, Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist," depicting memories of his early life in Sandwich, as well as his career highlights. That same year, Burgess, at the age of 86, had published his 15,000th story. He died on June 5, 1965, at the age of 91 in Hampden, Massachusetts.
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Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
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100 reviews All reviews
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WOW! This book is amazing!! I read this to my children ages 4,8,10 for science and we learned so much! When I say we I mean me too! This book has helped me to deepen my interest in birds as an adult while give the stories to my children. Half way through the book I noticed how they started paying more attention to detail when we go for our nature walks. I can not say enough good things about this book!
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I read this a little at a time to my four year old daughter while we waited in the carpool line. The stories, told from the perspective of Peter Rabbit, are perfect for littles to learn more about birds and nature.
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I don't know that there is any way you could more effectively or entertainingly convey such a volume of Ornithological information to children than is done here. That said, the physical descriptions of the birds get tiresome after a while, and the author has to reuse plot devices to get all the information in.
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My kids loved this book and actually learned a fair amount about birds. This sparked an enjoyment of bird watching for them which has been fun. I found the book to be very repetitive and one of the main characters (Jenny Wren) very obnoxious and condescending.
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The lives of birds put into story form. It is so much fun and a great way for kids to learn birds.
I own a 1919 copy.
I own a 1919 copy.
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We used this as Nature Study with my kids in homeschool this year and they loved it. We finally finished it today and it has been such a fun journey. They really learned to love birds and enjoyed looking up each one as we read about it. I highly recommend it.
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My kids couldn’t get enough and learned so much about birds through the use of an engaging story.
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