I remember reading aloud many of Thornton W. Burgess’s books to my children when they were young. They were particular favorites of my older daughter's. I just picked up one old scrapbook, from 1993-94, when my children were eight, six, and a few months old. A list of 33 books that I read aloud to them that year includes 11 by Burgess! I did not know until I read this autobiography that he wrote a daily newspaper column of nature stories, called “Bedtime Stories,” that ran for nearly FIFTY years
I remember reading aloud many of Thornton W. Burgess’s books to my children when they were young. They were particular favorites of my older daughter's. I just picked up one old scrapbook, from 1993-94, when my children were eight, six, and a few months old. A list of 33 books that I read aloud to them that year includes 11 by Burgess! I did not know until I read this autobiography that he wrote a daily newspaper column of nature stories, called “Bedtime Stories,” that ran for nearly FIFTY years! Not only that, but he also did a radio program for many years, and a nationwide nature club of his listeners was formed.
In my favorite chapter of this book, Teaching and Taught, Burgess talks about how nature study is crucial to “the most successful mental, moral, and spiritual development of the child,” and how stories, with “morals…pointed at the animal characters and not at the children” are a wonderful way to teach those lessons. Aside from giving his animal characters speech, so that they might tell their stories, Burgess stayed true to the actual behavior of the animals. He had a horror of being what President Theodore Roosevelt called a “nature faker” – a writer whose characters are romanticized and do things that animals never do.
I’m so glad I read this book now – just in time to start sharing Thornton Burgess’s stories with my two-year-old granddaughter!
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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.