The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Potter 23 Tales) [Hardcover]

Beatrix Potter (Author)

Book Description

Age Level: 4 and up | Series: Potter 23 Tales

Relates how the barnyard collie and pups rescued Jemima Puddle-duck from the fox's cooking pot.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Written and illustrated by Beatrix Potter (1866-1943). --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4 and up
  
• Hardcover: 64 pages
• Publisher: Warne (September 1, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 072323468X
• ISBN-13: 978-0723234685
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 4.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,145,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)was a writer and illustrator. The Lake District where she lived for the last thirty years of her life as a farmer and conservationist was a particular source of her inspiration, and her passion for the natural world lay behind the creation of her famous little books.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Naturalistic polemic in duck's clothing., May 13, 2002

By 

darragh o'donoghue - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Potter 23 Tales) (Hardcover)

I always had Beatrix Potter down as an avatar of Home Counties tweeness, with her anti-modern paeans to the countryside and de liddle cuddly animals. So the unsentimental brutalities of this story came as a welcome shock. 'Jemima Puddle-Duck' is as endearingly hopeless as her name suggests, unable to tend her eggs in the overcrowded barn she shares with some supercilious hens. She flies over the forest in search of a suitably solitary spot, and comes across a helpful gentleman dressed in tweed, reading 'The Sporting Times'. He is a fox, and invites her to make use of his summer residence, in particular the shed carpeted with the feathers of previous victims. Dazzled by his good breeding, Jemima accepts his offer and visits daily. When the eggs are about to hatch, Foxy suggests she bring along various goodies so they can have a charming goodbye party...

The unremitting violence in this story does not emanate from where you'd expect, and this clear-eyed vision of the natural order of things, of brute force vs. cunning, takes place in the most idyllic setting yuou can think of, a richly detailed rural England, its hills and plants alive and painted in the most soothing colours. But even this balmy backdrop plays out a cycle of struggle for domination, with spiders eating flies, and various other creatures being horrid to one another.

Written at the turn of the 20th century, just before female emancipation, it's hard not to see the woebegotten Jemima as an image of women's fate in a world run by men, both good and bad, with the fox as parisitic aristo in straitened circumstances, and the dog as paternalistic liberal. Indeed, the whole thing plays like an Emile Zola potboiler disguised as toddler fodder. Upsetting, cruel and marvellous.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Jemima Puddleduck without the Pictures, March 6, 2010

By 

Louie Louie (Saipan) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Kindle Edition)

This IS the story of Jemima Puddleduck, and it can be read to children. It loses a lot of its interest value without the pictures, but the story is still good.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck, November 2, 2000

By 

V. Charbonneau (Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck (Potter 23 Tales) (Hardcover)

The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck was the first Beatrix Potter book I read when I was young. It is the tale of a barnyard duck named Jemima who wishes to hatch her own eggs instead of leaving the task to the hens. She decides to leave and find a place to nest and encounters a polite gentleman with sandy whiskers who so kindly offers his help. It is a charming tale, as so many of Ms. Potter's stories are, complete with an endearing if not somewhat naive duck, a handsome yet sly fox and a wise old collie dog. The illustrations are quite nice, with some beautiful countryside scenes of Sawrey where the author lived. This story is a pleasure to read.