Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Buster Bear (Dover Children's Thrift Classics)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Buster Bear is a book of many lessons that we could use today. Little Joe Otter played a part in showing the need of not having things happen your way always. Grandfather Frog was a rock of common sense throughout the story.

-Eric Smith, Dyersburg,Tennessee

This book focuses on one of Burgess' many classic forest creatures of the Green Forest and Green Meadow areas: Buster Bear. Buster Bear is new to the area and due to his size and gruff voice, many fear him. However, he soon proves himself to be a kindhearted friendly bear that wants to be friends with his new neighbors. His neighbors are shocked however to find out that the token human in the series, Farmer Brown's Boy, is afraid of Buster; surprising everybody since it was widely thought that Farmer Brown's Boy feared nothing. As it turns out, not only is Farmer Brown's Boy afraid of Buster, but Buster is afraid of him!

Burgess seems to push the message that looks can be deceiving, and not to judge people based on your initial observation of them. This message is evident not only in before mentioned scenario, but also in the beginning of the book when Little Joe Otter initially thinks that Buster is trying to steal the fish that he caught, which wasn't the case and the two eventually went on to become friends.

I highly enjoy both this book, and this series. My daughter does to, as it makes for great bedtime reading with its short chapters.

Darien Summers, author of The Mischievous Hare, a children's book.

Thornton Burgess brings the best of both worlds to his books: delightful, imaginative story and characters with purposeful descriptions of animal behavior. This is a great book to add to your library. The children love to hear it read aloud, and are learning about nature while enjoying a good story.

This seems to be the only hardcover edition, sadly, and we ordered it because of that. But it has none of the wonderful Harrison Cady illustrations. This review refers to the Aegypan press edition.

This review applies to the edition published by Dover. Unfortunately all reviews show up under all editions, regardless of publisher.

This is a wonderful book and I highly recommend it. It has one of the most iconic scenes in Burgess -- Buster Bear getting a pail stuck on his head. However, the prospective buyer should be informed that the illustrations in this Dover edition are NOT by the original illustrator, Harrison Cady. Instead, they are crude redrawings by another artist, Thea Kliros. Although they are better than the illustrations in the Dover titles for which artist Pat Stewart did the crude redrawings, they are not as charming as Cady's work.

Some of the other titles in this Dover series of Thornton Burgess books do have original Harrison Cady illustrations.

To get real Harrison Cady illustrations of this title, you'll have to buy a used book. There were two sets of original Harrison Cady illustrations for this title:

-- Published by Little, Brown, with 6 full-page grayscale illustrations.

-- Published by Grosset & Dunlap, with 14 full-page B&W line drawings, including line-drawing versions of all 6 original grayscale illustrations in the Little, Brown edition, plus many smaller line drawings.

The redrawings in this Dover edition are of the 6 grayscale Little, Brown illustrations.

I recommend the Grosset & Dunlap edition. Cady did them decades after he did the 6 grayscale Little, Brown illustrations, after he had grown as an artist. Even though the Grosset & Dunlap line drawings are simpler than the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations, they are more charming. On the other hand, the Little, Brown grayscale illustrations better show Cady's remarkable vision for Burgess' creatures, so if you can get both, that's ideal. But either one is better than the drawings in this Dover edition.