I loved this book when I was little.

Kids love these

In The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat, Jerry and his friends, Billy Mink, Little Joe Otter, Grandfather Frog and Spotty the Turtle, have a problem. Suddenly, the Smiling Pool isn’t smiling and the Laughing Brook isn’t laughing! What has happened to the water? They set off upstream to find out what happened, and find a dam built across the Laughing Brook, way upstream in the Green Forest. Jerry Muskrat never knew he had a big cousin in the North who could build like that!

Read my full review here.

This children's book is definitely old fashioned but hasn't aged too badly. Although it can be read as a standalone or is better read as part of a series.

Read the 1914 edition. Christmas gift to somebody way back when. Paddy the Beaver is the only dam character drawn without clothes. I find that quite amusing.

The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat is one of the Bedtime Story Books Series by Thornton Burgess whose stories were all originally drawn by Harrison Cady. If you can get them with the original illustrations, you should do that. Sure, there's a sense of nostalgia that runs through me on re-reading something that my father would read to me, most nights. Yet, I would still argue that they hold value, as teaching devices, although I would also ask parents to screen the books, because some of the previous concepts may no longer be appropriate to current mores.

Here, the creatures of the Green Meadow and Green Forest discover that the Laughing Brook and the Smiling Pool are dropping to a dangerously low water level, threatening the lives of Jerry Muskrat, Little Joe Otter, Spotty the Turtle, Grandfather Frog, and Billy Mink. It behooves them to resolve the situation, but things become even more precarious when they find out that Farmer Brown's son has set some pretty nasty traps to thin the Green Forest population of critters.

These stories are really good educational devices to stimulate critical thinking, foster cooperation, and engender an understanding for the importance of a heterogeneous society. Some pneumonic devices, as well as repetition, and silly poetry are used to perpetuate learning.

This was a fun little book that told about different creatures through story. The chapters were extremely short (some just a couple pages) and tended to summarize/recap the last chapter. Which might have been helpful to pull the threads of memory out for us if we only read one chapter a day; but as the case was, we read five or so per day, and I found it a bit tiresome (but the kids didn't say anything about it).

Other than that, the story was good, the sentence structures and vocabulary wonderful and charming, the narrative told gently and conversationally as if your grandfather had you on his knee spinning a yarn for you, and besides all that, we learned a bit about speaking respectfully, persevering through hard things, and being a friend.

x5

The World of the Green Forest and Meadows was one of my absolute favourites when I was young. I've spent much time collecting as many Thornton Burgess books as I can find for my children now. These are the most charming, unassuming books you could ever dream of reading. Thornton Burgess teaches us about all the little forest and meadow folk's living habits while creating a beautiful world that children and adults alike can enjoy.

New (to me) author. Sweet little tale of small animals—Grandfather Frog, Jerry Muskrat, Billy Mink, Spotty Turtle, and Joe Otter among them—living by the Laughing Brook and Smiling Pool. In this one they deal with traps put by Farmer Brown’s son and a mysterious trouble that has struck their home because of which the Laughing Brook stops laughing and the Smiling Pool, smiling. This had a Enid Blyton-y Beatrix Potter-ish feel about it.

I'm not sure how this sweet little children's book came into my possession, but I dutifully read it on my quest to read every book in my house. Although it is over 100 years old, it holds up better than I would have expected in both style and tone. A collection of diverse animals teams up to resolve a problem in with their local brook and pool and demonstrate kindness and moral fortitude along the way.

Maybe it's a 2020 reflex, but I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't encounter many objectionable phrases, words or characters, although in retrospect not one creature was female and "Ol Mistah Buzzard" is clearly problematic.

This book is very exciting because you never know what's going to happen next! The best two characters in the book are Spotty the Turtle and Jerry Muskrat. I like Spotty the Turtle's sayings. And I like Jerry Muskrat because he is just plain funny.