The Adventures of Old Man Coyote: With 3 Lost Chapters Restored

by Thornton W. Burgess, Harrison Cady (Illustrator), Gregory J. Lovern

Old Man Coyote's arrival causes fear among many of the animals of the Green Forest. Old Granny Fox fears that he will outhunt her and uses her wiles to try to get him to leave.

Includes three lost chapters that were part of the original newspaper serialization.

This is the most illustrated edition ever. Includes 20 full-page illustrations by Harrison Cady, 19 spot illustrations also by Harrison Cady, and 25 illusrations by an anonymous artist which appeared with the original newspaper serialization.

Also includes two bonus chapters:
· Burgess' very first Bedtime Story, "Billy Mink Loses a Race", along with its original illustration, which appeared in newspapers Feb. 5th, 1912. This story has never before been published in book form.
· A sample restored chapter from the forthcoming "The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver: With 10 Lost Chapters Restored". Never before published in book form.

Also includes two chapters for parents and other grownups, which detail:
· The restoration of the lost material for this edition, and:
· The history of Burgess' Bedtime Stories.

179 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 9, 2012

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely fun, even if only for children.