A really splendid children's book teaching patience, respect, and kindness. It was written over a 100 years ago and I still found it delightful and adorable.

3 stars & 3/10 hearts. This is a fun, quick read with some good lessons. I loved Spotty’s part and the little talk about words. 

A Favourite Quote: “‘One never knows how great their blessings are until they have been lost and found again.’”
A Favourite Beautiful Quote: “Here it was the beautiful springtime, the gladdest time of all the year, the time when happiness creeps into everybody’s heart.”
A Favourite Humorous Quote: “‘You must find all the traps that Farmer Brown’s boy has set.’
“‘How are we going to do it?’ asked Bobby Coon. 
“‘By looking for them,’ replied Grandfather Frog tartly. 
“Bobby Coon looked foolish and slipped out of sight behind his mother.”

I really liked it and it had tons of exciting chapters like how Jerry Muskrat broke down the wall that Paddy the Beaver had made. Actually I think it was a dam or something that beavers make to keep the water in and their home.

"I was going to give this 10,000 stars because it I liked Paddy the Beaver. But let's go with 2 stars because it was pretty boring but kind of good. I think we were reading it forever." James, age 5

Read as a kid

This is one of several Thornton W. Burgess books that I remember my dad reading to me and my sister when we were little. Loved them. Later read it on my own.

I often read children's books as light reading, without having to really think about what the universe is telling us etc. This book was charming in the essence that it is straightforward in its story. It starts with an intro to Jerry Muskrat and how he is caught in the farmer's boy's trap even though he is warned by his friends and his mom. In the next chapter his mom organizes a meeting to put the problem of the traps to the animals in the forest and so forth. The stories after that concentrate on a single problem, the decreasing water level in the Laughing and Smiling pool. Jerry Muskrat along with his friends go in search for the cause of this and discover a dam built in the Green Forest that creates a man-made pond right smack in the middle of the forest. The discovery of the culprit and how everything goes back to normal is quite entertaining. The stories are interesting and you are not bored so I would recommend anyone to read the book... especially the young readers...

The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat has a good mix of tension, humor, life lessons, and tidbits about the animals in the book.

This is a children book but listening to it on LibriVox was quite enjoying. The way the narrator brought life to each character is marvellous work. There are some life lessons from this book. However "Slow and steady wins the race" but this book emphasize on value of team work for achieving success.

Kids loved it!

Very sweet, well-written, and lots of good adventures. Loved by all the kids from ages 4 - 10 years old.

The Thornton Burgess series in general is quite an endearing series of children's books, which do a fine job of being readable by young readers and having interesting plots and introducing young people to a variety of animals in a semi-anthropomorphized way. This particular entry, "The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat" is far from the best of the lot, but it's still a fun read for a youngster, or for an older person who is willing to be a child again for the hour or so that it would take to read it.

The Burgess Books

This is a phrase that brings a smile to my face as often as I hear it. As a young child, I would lose myself for hours in the simple world of the wood and pond inhabited by Little Joe Otter, Buster Bear, Grandfather Frog, and terrorized by Farmer Brown's Boy. I can remember the very shelf, even the exact spot in the little library in Felton, CA where these books were kept. I would return practically every week with a new armload to last me until our next trip to the library. Often I would carry out stories that I read several times before, just so I could once again escape into this imaginary world of furry mischief.

I remember these books well in concept, though the specifics of most of the stories elude me. It was easily fifteen years ago when I began reading them and has been over a decade since I last picked up one of Burguess' stories to read it. That being said, this review is being written as a look back.

These stories are very simple and very fun. Of course, they are children's literature, so that's to be expected, but these stories strike me as especially so. Even still, I can remember some fascinating things I gleaned between the their covers.

For one thing, Burgess did a fantastic job of presenting the ideas of persepective and motivation in simplistic terms. For example, "The Adventures of Danny Field Mouse" would cast Old Man Coyote as a vicious, mean creature wishing to prey on Danny and his friends and family. Yet, pick up instead "The Adventures of Old Man Coyote" and you'll see that when the story is told with him as the protagonist, those pesky field mice are annoying and useful for little more than a snack. After reading both books, you're no more inclined to think of Old Man Coyote as a villian than you are to think of Danny Field Mouse as a pest that should be exterminated. (Note: This is a generic example. I do not recall if Old Man Coyote plays a role in Danny Field Mouse's story or the other way around, but this concept was presented several times. It made an impression on me.)

The only characters consistantly presented as antagonists were Farmer Brown and his boy. This would be one of the only things that I chalk up as odd, or maybe just a little "off" in these books. Humans and their influence on nature are presented as a negative influence on nature and animals - always. It's interesting to note though that while humans are seen as a negative, humanity is lauded and held up as virtuous. All of the animals take on not only human personalities but characteristics, traits, and mannerisms. From a frog with a monocle and an otter with a handkerchief tied to a stick, to a busy-body Jay and a reclusive owl who desires only to be left alone, humanity and it's traits keep cropping up.

Which would be another thing of value I feel that I saw in the Burgess books. These stories are full of social interaction and personality conflicts, even if they are charicatured more often than not. We see over and over again a working out of peace, if not harmony, between conflicting personalities. It may not always be easy to point out a scripture to reinforce the lesson implied, but social harmony is presented and more often than not, resolution is through reconciliation, forgiveness, or a similar method that is not only laudable, but distinctly Christian in action if not motivation.

All in all, the world created by Thornton W. Burgess is imaginative, innocent, fun, and educational. My reccomendation? Grab a handful from your local library, gather a group of kids as an excuse, and lose yourselves in childhood imaginations as you read aloud the stories that have captivated several generations of young readers with the antics of our furry, albiet elusively human, friends.

(Disclaimers: As I said, it has been over a decade since I actually read one of Burgess' books. As such, there may be a specific example that's a little off in this review or something that I would have noticed as an adult that my childhood memories are missing. Also, all of these books say I read them in 1998. While I'm certain I read several of them that year, I'm sure I read some before and after that date as well.)