At the Smiling Pool

by Thornton W. Burgess

Stories about animals living in and around a pool.

185 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1945

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

[Bethany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thornton W. Burgess was a seasoned and widely known children’s author by the mid-1940s. He took a different approach than usual with this series of books based around the ecosystems of rural Massachusetts. “At the Smiling Pool” was the second in the series and featured all the creatures who live in or near the pond -- from kingfishers and muskrats to tree toads and silver eels. Some were characters long beloved by Burgess fans; others were new or characters who turned up in his syndicated newspaper column from time to time, like Dipper the Grebe.

As always, Burgess gently and skillfully packages nature lessons for his young readers. He also shows how interrelated these pond-dwellers are, including as part of the food chain. A paved road that comes near the Smiling Pool gets the side eye, and so does well-intentioned but clumsy Farmer Brown’s Boy, who nearly steps on a sandpiper nest.

I can’t finish without calling out Harrison Cady’s illustrations, especially those of life underwater. The fish, seaweed, tadpoles… so whimsical! His subjects are almost always on dry land, so these were a real treat.

[Gregory · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thornton W. Burgess had been one of the most popular and bestselling children's authors of the 1910s and 1920s, but children's books were not big business during the Great Depression, and no new books of his animal stories were published after 1929.

But he continued his daily story printed in newspapers across North America, and in 1944 - 1950 a new series of 6 books of his animal stories appeared. This was the second of those, published in 1945.

Compared to his earlier series, this series is less plot driven and more about describing interesting behavior of animals and insects. It appeals to a slightly older child; these are good for late elementary school and middle school. It has:

- Four chapters about Peeper the Hyla singing and dodging predators.
- Four chapters about how Grandfather Frog lives.
- Two chapters about Taddy the Tadpole growing up.
- A chapters abut Little Mr. Know-it-all the young Muskrat who didn't heed danger signals from his family.
- A chapters about something in the Smiling Pool that Prickly Porky likes to eat.
- A chapters about a Muskrat mother fighting off a mink.
- Three chapters about young Kingfishers learning to fly and catch minnows.
- Three chapters about Blacky the Crow trying to get a tasty clam out of its shell.
- Three chapters about Mr. and Mrs. Teeter the Spotted Sandpiper and their nest.
- Two chapters about Mrs. Slippery Slim the Silver Eeel leaving home.
- Five chapters about Mr. and Mrs. Dipper the Grebe, how they dive and swim, and how she carries her babies on her back.

Burgess was one of the most knowledgeable naturalists of his time, and these stories are as educational as they are entertaining. They make fascinating reading for any age reader. I found particularly interesting the chapters on the grebes. And an episode where Blacky the Crow cleverly steals a clam but then doesn't get to eat it was amusing.

Many Burgess fans love his illustrator Harrison Cady's wonderful work just about as much as Burgess' stories. This series contains Cady's best work for Burgess. Each one has unique endpapers by Cady. This title has 29 B&W spot illustrations (some are repeats), 8 larger B&W illustrations, 7 full-page B&W illustrations, 4 full-page color illustrations, and a 2-page spread color illustration that included the title page. The color illustrations are not full-color; they are black, white, and a beautiful shade of Prussian blue.

The books in this series are nicely bound with sewn bindings and full cloth covered boards.

This book was later part of the 1955 two-book volume The Big Book of Burgess Nature Stories, which does not include all the illustrations.

The books in this series are long out of print. They won't enter the public domain for decades, so they aren't available on Project Gutenberg. To read it you'll need to get it from the library (probably through an inter-library loan), or buy a used copy. AbeBooks.com is the best place to find it, but you can find it on eBay and Amazon too.