Here are 100 books that The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus fans have personally recommended if you like
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The role of the parable is an important one to help understand the roots of right and wrong. We live in such a fractured and untrusting world, that I think it’s important to rediscover the simple truths of honesty and integrity over-ambition, and the pursuit of power for its own sake. And so, I have an interest in the topic because I am a citizen hoping for a better world, and an expertise in the subject because I’m a father raising two children in that same fractious environment.
Dr. Seuss is the master of the parable. Yertle the Turtle is a classic example of an illustrated picture book with a point about the pitfalls of unbridled ambition, and while I chose this book to highlight, The Lorax is another great example of a story with an equally consequential moral.
In this hilarious book, featuring three timeless fables, Dr. Seuss explores the pitfalls of growing too big for your boots!
King Yertle the Turtle soon learns the pitfalls of becoming too big for your boots, in the first tale in this hilarious trio of classic Dr. Seuss fables!
As part of a major rebrand programme, HarperCollins is relaunching Dr. Seuss's bestselling books, including such perennial favourites as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham and Fox in Socks. In response to consumer demand, the bright new cover designs incorporate much needed guidance on reading levels, with the standard…
The role of the parable is an important one to help understand the roots of right and wrong. We live in such a fractured and untrusting world, that I think it’s important to rediscover the simple truths of honesty and integrity over-ambition, and the pursuit of power for its own sake. And so, I have an interest in the topic because I am a citizen hoping for a better world, and an expertise in the subject because I’m a father raising two children in that same fractious environment.
There is no better teller of parables than Aesop.Each of his stories carries the weight of its moral in an easily understood and digestible manner.Just because they were written millennia ago doesn’t mean they aren’t relatable and relevant today. I also love Aesop’s Fables because they inspire and activate my imagination.Being a full-time artist, looking for inspiration around every corner, that’s important!
I never stopped reading children’s books and started writing my own when I hit the age of 40. I gravitate toward crisp drawing styles and illustrations that bring out the magic in the everyday. These books are a few of my favorites.
This wonderful retelling of an old Chinese folktale brings the reader (and listener) into the little village in China where two brothers live—Chang, the younger brother, and the hilariously repeatable Tikki-Tikki Tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.
There’s a pile of memorable books from my youth—Dr. Seuss, Bill Peet, Robert McCloskey—but this one stands out for its delightful story-telling and a name that I will be able to rattle off from memory for the rest of my life!
Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo- chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo!
Three decades and more than one million copies later children still love hearing about the boy with the long name who fell down the well. Arlene Mosel and Blair Lent's classic re-creation of an ancient Chinese folktale has hooked legions of children, teachers, and parents, who return, generation after generation, to learn about the danger of having such an honorable name as Tikki tikki tembo-no sa rembo-chari bari ruchi-pip peri pembo.
Tikki Tikki Tembo is the winner of the 1968 Boston Globe - Horn Book Award for Picture Books.
I’ve written across genres, including mysteries like The Last Policeman and big works of alternate history like Underground Airlines. But Bedbugs—now republished as The Bonus Room—was one of my first books, and very dear to my heart. I’ve always loved books that pit a single, relatively helpless protagonist against some inexplicable force that he or she cannot begin to fathom. A force that can’t be reasoned with or bargained with. You just have to beat it. Perhaps that’s why I love these books about man vs. beast—the natural world is our friend, and animal are subservient to us…until suddenly, terrifyingly, they’re not.
When we think of scary animals we think of gnashing teeth and tearing claws, but obviously Orwell’s famous parable presents a very different kind of malevolence: that of overweaning ambition and our deep-seated instinct to control.
The pigs that present themselves as heroes and then slowly, greedily, inexorable turn into murderous dictators, forcing the other animals to do their bidding and then slaughtering them when they become too old, are of course not really pig-like at all—they are human-like, and therefore all the more terrifying.
The perfect edition for any Orwell enthusiasts' collection, discover Orwell's classic dystopian masterpiece beautifully reimagined by renowned street artist Shepard Fairey
'All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.'
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organised to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the…
I am a former children’s librarian who writes books for children and young adults. I love history, especially black history. We didn’t get much in school when I was a child, so I’ve been catching up on some of what I missed. I am particularly drawn to under-told stories about people who deserve more recognition for their contributions. I’m proud that some of those people are members of my own family.
“They say the people could fly. They say that long ago in Africa some of the people knew magic. And they could walk up on the air like climbin on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields.” These beautiful words and those that follow have remained in my heart from the moment I first discovered this story in Hamilton’s 1985 folktale collection. The inspiring messages of hope, faith, and the innate desire for freedom are powerfully conveyed through Hamilton’s fine storytelling and the Dillons’ elegant art. I love the feeling of triumphas “old and young who were called slaves” join hands, rise in the air, and fly away to freedom.
Virginia Hamilton's Coretta Scott King Honor book is the breathtaking fantasy tale of slaves who possessed ancient magic that enabled them to fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.
Leo and Diane Dillon's powerful illustrations accompany Hamilton's voice as it sings out from the pages with the soaring cadences that echo the story tellers of her childhood as the granddaughter of a fugitive slave.
I'm a devotee of the Word. I collect folklore. I teach literature. Generally I deal with everything from the Greek epics to Jamaican dub poetry, but my focus has been on African American folklore and culture. You might say that I'm something of a proselytizer, dedicated to seeking the Word, collecting and preserving the Word, interpreting the Word, spreading the Word. To paraphrase an old folk saying, "I've got the Word in me, and I can preach it, you know." My numerous collections of folklore have won awards and citations and enthusiastic praise from some impressive personalities and journals, but my greatest reward is witnessing the impact my collections have on ordinary, just plainlongso folk.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore is a superb three-volume introduction to every area of African American Folklore by one of the nation’s leading Black folklorists.
I found it required reading for anyone interested in Black folklore. The entries are detailed and well written. I am frequently recommending this encyclopedia to people who often write to me with questions about African American folklore.
African American culture draws upon a rich body of traditions from Africa, Latin America, and the South, and folklore is fundamental to the African American heritage. The first work of its kind, this definitive encyclopedia comprehensively overviews African American folklore. Included are roughly 700 alphabetically arranged entries by more than 100 expert contributors on such topics as folktales, music, art, foodways, spiritual beliefs, proverbs, and many other subjects. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia concludes with a bibliography of major works.
African American folklore has played a dominant role in shaping the spirit and soul of the…
I have two major passions in life: music and writing. I started learning guitar aged 16, and my friends and I formed a band as soon as we possibly could. My first professional job was writing about pop music for a monthly magazine, and much later in life, I discovered jazz. Now I’m a bass-player, jazz singer, and composer who works with some of the finest jazz musicians in London, and I play regularly at Ronnie Scott’s club. As well as the Donald Fagen biography, I’ve also written biographies of the great jazz singers Mark Murphy (for me, the greatest of them all) and Jon Hendricks.
I make no apology for including this immense and important work. So much of the music I love originated with the kidnapping of black people from Africa.
This book shows how not merely the music of Africa but whole swathes of culture now considered “American” were imported along with the slaves. How did they cope with being ripped from their homeland, transported across the Atlantic in chains, and forced to work in the fields of an alien land?
Levine lays it all out, including everything from Black religion to Black comedy, and despite what you might think, it’s a real page-turner.
When Black Culture and Black Consciousness first appeared thirty years ago, it marked a revolution in our understanding of African American history. Contrary to prevailing ideas at the time, which held that African culture disappeared quickly under slavery and that black Americans had little group pride, history, or cohesiveness, Levine uncovered a cultural treasure trove, illuminating a rich and complex African American oral tradition, including songs, proverbs, jokes, folktales, and long narrative poems called toasts-work that dated from before and after emancipation. The fact that these ideas and sources seem so commonplace now is in large part due this book…
My great uncle was an eccentric book collector who lived in an old, rambling house stuffed floor-to-ceiling with thousands and thousands of books. After he died, I inherited a tiny portion of his collection: a set of state guidebooks from the 1930s and 40s. These were the American Guides created by the Federal Writers’ Project, the New Deal program that put jobless writers to work during the Great Depression. I dipped into these weird, rich, fascinating books, and I was hooked immediately. Some years later, I quit my job in publishing to research and write my own account of the FWP’s unlikely rise and lamentable fall, Republic of Detours.
Today, most people know Zora Neale Hurston as a novelist, thanks to her classic Their Eyes Were Watching God. But she was also an accomplished folklorist, anthropologist, playwright, and essayist. And yet, by the late 1930s, she was broke, and she found work with both the Federal Theater Project and Federal Writers’ Project. This book collects Hurston’s writing for the FWP in her home state of Florida, along with an incisive essay by Pamela Bordelon. The sheer variety of material on display here wasn’t unusual for the FWP: you’ll find essayistic meditations on folklife and art, collections of tall tales and children’s songs, and sketches of labor in the turpentine camps and citrus groves—as well as a chilling report on a racist massacre in Ocoee.
When Pamala Bordelon was researching a work on the Florida Federal Writers Project, she discovered writings in the collection that were unmistakably from the hand of Zora Neale Hurston, one of the leading writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Over half of the works included here have not been published or are only available in the Library of America edition of Hurston's works. As Hurston's fans know, all of her novels draw upon her deep interest in folklore, particularly from her home state of Florida. Here we see the roots of that work, from the wonderful folktale of the monstrous alligator…
Jenny Jaeckel is the award-winning author and illustrator of several books including her historical fiction companion novelsHouse of RougeauxandBoy, Falling, a collection of illustrated short fiction entitled For the Love of Meat, and the graphic novel memoir Spot 12: Five Months in the Neonatal ICU. She has a special passion for coming-of-age stories for their power in capturing the stories of life that are the most specific and most vivid. When not writing, Jaeckel works as an editor and translator. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia, with her family. Eighteenis her third novel.
Like all the young girls in this shortlist of coming-of-age stories, Ashley C. Ford (one of Angelou’s literary children) is a survivor hell-bent on finding a life better than the one she was handed, and, like the others, she is remarkably sensitive, imaginative, and able to paint her world for us in the most tender and unique shapes and colors. How does a young girl weather such brutal realities, experience beauty, and splice together a space for her soul? Ford’s memoir is one such contemporary story.
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NBCC John Leonard Prize Finalist Indie Bestseller
“This is a book people will be talking about forever.” —Glennon Doyle, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Untamed
“Ford’s wrenchingly brilliant memoir is truly a classic in the making. The writing is so richly observed and so suffused with love and yearning that I kept forgetting to breathe while reading it.” —John Green, #1 New York Times bestselling author
One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the looming absence of her…
I have been researching and writing about 19th-century American murders since 2009, and my blog, Murder by Gaslight (murderbygaslight.com), includes illustrated stories of more than 500 murder cases. My book, The Bloody Century: True Tales of Murder in 19th Century America, compiled fifty of the most famous murders. In researching these stories, I prefer to use primary sources such as newspaper articles, pamphlets, and books from the time of the murder. They present the attitudes surrounding the crime without modern analysis and preserve details that tend to disappear over time. My latest book, So Far from Home: The Pearl Bryan Murder, draws almost exclusively from newspaper accounts in 1896 and 1897.
Stagolee, the bad man who will not back down, is an icon of African American mythology. His defining moment, the Christmas night murder of Billy Lyons is the subject of folk and blues songs from the turn of the twentieth century to the present day. Though many know the story, before Cecil Brown’s book, most did not realize that the story was true. On Christmas night, 1895, in St. Louis, “Stack” Lee Shelton shot Billy Lyons in a fight over a Stetson hat. Stagolee Shot Billy documents the events leading to the murder while shining a light on the culture, attitudes, and politics of the St. Louis black community in the 1890s. The shooting of Billy Lyons is a Gilded Age murder that continues to resonate.
Although his story has been told countless times - by performers from Ma Rainey, Cab Calloway and the Isley brothers to Ike and Tina Turner, James Brown and Taj Mahal - no one seems to know who Stagolee really is. Stack Lee? Stagger Lee? He has gone by all these names in the ballad that has kept his exploits before us for over a century. Delving into a subculture of St. Louis known as "Deep Morgan", Cecil Brown emerges with the facts behind the legend to unfold the mystery of Stack Lee and the incident that led to murder in…
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