The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Paperback)

by Washington Irving (Author), Russ Flint (Illustrator) "In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at the broad expansion of the river denominated..." (more)
Key Phrases: discreet statues, inquisitive gentleman, bold dragoon, Lope Sanchez, Rip Van Winkle, Tom Walker (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The San Souci brothers (The Legend of Scarface have retold the story of Ichabod Crane's last days alive, admiring the lovely Katrina and attending, at her father's home, a party where he hears of the Headless Horseman. Like A Christmas Carol, this story has been routinely reworked in strange and terrible ways. Here the artist has provided full-color paintings that show an awkward, frightfully thin Ichabod and the sweetly petite Katrina, set in 18th century surroundings. The pursuit at the end is shown in sweeping, eerie scenes. For those who find Washington Irving's original version hard going, this one is a fine alternative, especially for reading aloud.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From School Library Journal
Grade 3-6?Unlike the more concise adaptations by Robert Van Nutt (Rabbit Ears, 1991) and Robert San Souci (Doubleday, 1986), this version of the classic tale, retold by Grandma Moses's great-grandson, remains true to the original in its lengthy and flowery narration. An unnamed storyteller enthusiastically relays the legend of the Headless Horseman and his effect on the schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, in "...a mysterious, dreamy little settlement called Sleepy Hollow." While there are occasional awkward passages, the text is lively and compelling, with a 19th-century flavor. The primitive paintings enhance the Hudson Valley setting; unfortunately, their quality is uneven. Moses is most successful with the double-page landscapes and village scenes (similar to his great-grandmother's style), which will intrigue readers with their detailed activity. A few of the smaller vignettes capture humorous situations and the personalities of individual characters, but many, especially the night scenes, are indistinct and muddy. Moses includes black characters in the illustrations, though he has removed Irving's stereotyped descriptive passages. The lively text begs to be read aloud, but the detailed paintings lend themselves to one-on-one viewing. Try San Souci's or Van Nutt's version if you are sharing the illustrations with a group.?Kristin Lott, East Brunswick Public Library, NJ
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 4-8
  
• Paperback: 32 pages
• Publisher: Ideals Publications (August 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0824985745
• ISBN-13: 978-0824985745
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 9 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (57 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,255,186 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The True Story of the Headless Horseman, January 8, 2001

By	Bart Johnson (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (School & Library Binding)

Have you ever heard of the Headless Horseman? Have you ever heard the stories about him and how he attacks people in the woods? Have you ever wondered whether or not the story is real?

Find out for yourself by reading Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I enjoyed reading this book and i think anyone who has a liking for mysterious legends and superstitions should read this book beacause of the interesting legend the town believes in. There are few characters to keep track of and the story is not hard to follow. The book is long but the reading goes quickly.

The story is set in the late 18th century in a town in New York called Sleepy Hollow. The town believes in a legend of a headless horseman who rides through the woods at night anf attacks people. The main character is a man named Ichabod Crane who is a schoolteacher from Connecticut. He moves to Sleepy Hollow in search of work and ends up going from home to home working as a tutor. One of his students is 18 year old Katrina Van Tassel who comes from a wealthy family. Ichabod gets the idea that he will try to marry Katrina in order to obtain the family's wealth. However, Katrina's boyrfriend Abraham "Brom Bones" Brut has other plans for Ichabod. As the tension rises, Ichabod continues trying to win Katrina until a breathtaking surprise appearance by the town's legend creates as mysterious an ending as they come.

The book has many strengths and few weaknesses. The author manages to create a mood in the book that keeps you always on th edge of your seat waiting for the legend of the Headless Horseman to come into play. The story is simple and easy to follow but is still very interesting. The characters are developed well and have personalities that you can understand and relate to. One such character is Brom Bones who is easily seen as an arrogant egotist. The only weakness of the book was one based on my personal opinion. The end of the story leaves too much to be concluded for my liking.

All in all, this book was a great story. The author wrote the characters in such a way that you had definite feelings towards each one of them. Also, the story line was definitely not without surprise. But if you want to discover what surprises I am talking about then I suggest you read The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where The Pocantico Winds Its Wizard Stream, February 24, 2003

By	J. E. Barnes (Bayridge, Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Books of Wonder) (Hardcover)

The original 1928 Arthur Rackham edition of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (first published in 1819) was one of the most beautifully illustrated versions of the tale ever produced. This Books Of Wonder facsimile of that edition is certainly the finest available today, though folk artist Will Moses' bright retelling runs a close second. Rackham's watercolors for this American classic are very much in keeping with his earlier work, which had established him as the greatest British illustrator of his era.

Where much of Irving's tale is painted in the warm autumn hues, Rackham choose to portray Sleep Hollow as not only a place of overwhelming haunts and visions, but as a region existing in a state of permanent, moody twilight. His Sleep Hollow seems perpetually in crepuscular shadow: the last pure rays of the sun have just vanished from the earth, and darkness, though it has not fallen yet, is falling quickly. In the artist's eye, Irving's fireside tale appears to take place not in glorious mid-October, but in storm-swept late November. The illustrator's anthropomorphic and archetypal Sleepy Hollow also magnifies elements of Irving's romantic landscape over and above the necessities of the text. While witches, ghosts, and visions are discussed in the story, Rackham depicts the trees, houses, and countryside of the region as teeming with every kind of fairy, goblin, dryad, and witch, as if calmly revealing to the eyes of man the always coexistent if invisible supernatural life of the Hudson River Valley. His painting of Major Andre's Tree, for example, depicts a traditional European fairytale witch and her black cat familiar walking along the road beneath Andre's tree as if they had every right to be there. It is mankind that is the anxious, insecure, and mortally temporary interloper into this vaster mystical world. Rackham's trees are trees but also fairies, his fairies are fairies but also witches, his witches are human in form but also trees, and the birds resting in the trees, while birds, are sometimes partially fairies. All of these creatures confidently, humorously, and mischievously observe mankind, which, when not perpetually scurrying home to safety, gathers together in nervous groups to share tidings, portents, and spook tales.

Irving's remarkably poetic and nuanced prose is in every way worthy of the man who bears the honor of being America's first great writer. Interestingly, the tale is partially a study in contrasts: schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his rival, the rabble - rousing Brom Bones, though obvious opposites, each also contain elements of the other. Ichabod, though he lives largely in his thoughts and dreams, has a very definite physical side: he plays boisterously outdoors with the town children, and, at the fatal party at the story's end, commands the dance floor in a way that delights and astonishes the other guests. And Brom, who is a great horseman and a fearless fighter, is also known throughout the region for his cleverness in shrewdly achieving his own ends. Ichabod is an ugly, eccentric "scarecrow" of a man, while Brom is "broad - shouldered and double - jointed," with a "Herculean frame and great powers of limb." Brom, unlike the ultimately solitary Ichabod, is a well - established alpha male with "three or four boon companions who regard him as their model," and who comprise his "gang." On the other hand, Ichabod, when not surrounded by his boy students, spends his time gossiping and sharing ghost stories around midnight fires with elderly Dutch women. Ichabod and Brom both court the lovely Katrina Van Tassel in their own fashion, not only because she is a model of feminine beauty and charm, but because each covets her family's wealth and bountiful farmland.

It's no accident that the "dominant" specter of Sleepy Hollow, who is "commander - in - chief of all the powers of the air," is a headless horseman, while Ichabod is a respected teacher and storyteller, a "man of letters" and a "pedagogue." The fearsome, massively - built Headless Horseman, who may or may not be Brom in disguise, is all torso and limbs, while Ichabod is one of the few, if not the only, inhabitant of the hollow who earns his living by his intellect - by his head. Thus they make symbolically perfect, if unequal, opponents. With his real or illusory ties to the supernatural, the headless horseman, who is believed to ride the wind and to appear and disappear in bursts of fire, is a malevolent force of nature. If of supernatural origin, then he does indeed command "the nightmare, with her whole ninefold," and all the other spirits of the air; but if merely human, then he still commands Brom's raw, "Herculean" power, and is physically far more than a match for Ichabod. Clearly, Irving was making a statement of sorts. Brom's earthy cleverness and steely masculinity triumph in the end, while Ichabod's misapplied intelligence, more often than not, leads him towards, and not away from, superstition, anxiety, and hysteria - ridden imagining. Brom's quiet confidence in his prowess is genuine, but the talkative Ichabod's confidence is only a smug self - deception out of which his boastfulness and foolish behavior are born.

This edition is a happy marriage of two masters of their form, and contains the unabridged text. Travelers may be particularly interested in the Rackham watercolor captioned "Reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones," which portrays Ichabod and three Dutch maidens standing in the Old Dutch Churchyard on an overcast afternoon. The illustration is remarkable, because, 75 years after it was completed, those visiting the churchyard today, which is now a national landmark, can stand in exactly the same spot and see how incredibly accurate the artist's representation of the burial ground was, and how little the beautiful site has changed, in mood and detail, over the years. As Irving wrote, "Time, which changes all things, is slow in its operations on a Dutchman's dwelling." And thereabouts.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE FIRST HALLOWEEN?, June 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Hardcover)

Like Rip Van Winkle, this tale is set in Dutch New York State in a real place called Tarry Town. The colonists farm and gossip, play tricks, have ambitions and court young ladies--in an area steeped in macabre superstition. Ichabod crane, a lanky and susceptible schoolmaster from Connecticut, vies with local hothead, Brom Bones, for the affection (and lush estates) of desirable Katrina Van Tassel.

But the sleepy region's ghostly lore and grisly legends are used for more than mere fireside entertainment. Will we ever know the truth of the shattered pumpkin by the bridge? Each one must fill in the fate of the ambitious pedagogue as seems best, for Washington Irving leaves it to the reader to decide.

Once the US ambassador to Spain, Irving traveled widely and collected the folklore of the countries he visited nearly 150 years ago. "Yet his characters are as fresh and vital today as when they first appeared in print." One edition of his stories includes: Rip Van Wwinkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, plus two lesser-known works: The Spectre Bridegroom (set in Germany) and The Moor's Legacy (set in Spain's Alhambra). Few authors can match his rich vocabulary and detailed narrative. Our American literary and folkloric heritage are indebted to Irving's style and imagination. What were Halloween without the Headless Horseman hounding poor Ichabod Crane through the spooky woods?