Last Tales of Uncle Remus

by Julius Lester, Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator)

Retells the final adventures and misadventures of Brer Rabbit and his friends and enemies

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Julius Lester was an American writer of books for children and adults. He was an academic who taught for 32 years (1971–2003) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He was also a photographer, as well as a musician who recorded two albums of folk music and original songs.

Reviews

[Bon Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was fun because it told a bunch of fun stories about animals.

[Gina · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is a lot less Brer Rabbit and more other folk tales -- including more humans -- but they are still the some type as the other books.

[Emily Bell · Rating 4 out of 5]

For my Children's Literature class at university, I read this Uncle Remus narrative as well as the Joel Chandler Harris version. I liked this one more by leaps and bounds. For one, the grammar reflects the Southern speech without being near impossible to read without a headache. The stories are just as charming. And the author is of African American descent and knows these stories well. If I chose between one of these Uncle Remus books to read to my children, I would certainly choose this one. The illustrations are also quite lovely.

[Brandyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like that the author did a lot of stories even though theres a lot of characters in it. I like that there are some pictures that are colored and not colored. At the end there's something weird because theres a guy who lied to his wife. He was a witch and the dad tried to cut them in half and they kept throwing magic powers so the father won't do that. And there was a queen that was half spider and half wolf. Really weird. And well, its just a good story. And my favorite chapter was the cricket with eyebrows on his legs.

[Raegan]

I like how the book is written and how each story is different from the last and how they use the same characters in each story ,and I would recommend it to middle school and elementary

[Nicolina DiMascia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Title: The Last Tales of Uncle Remus
Author: Julius Lester
Illustrator: Jerry Pinkney
Genre: Non-European Folklore
Theme(s): Folklore, Tales, Animals

Opening line/sentence:
“The first thing you have to understand is that the world today is different than it was back when these stories took place.”

Brief Book Summary (2-3 sentences in your own words):
Brer Rabbit goes on an adventure with friends in the final book of the series. With 39 different selections, this book has something in it for every reader.

Professional Recommendation/Review #1:
Janice Del Negro (Booklist, Dec. 15, 1993 (Vol. 90, No. 8) )
Thirty-nine selections--from tall tales and ghost stories to trickster tales--drawn from the African American tradition are reclaimed and retold in this fourth and apparently final volume in Lester's Uncle Remus series. Lester's ability to communicate the oral rhythm of the stories is compelling, and his storyteller's voice offers commentary and asides in a nearly perfect combination of traditional and modern vernacular. Humor bubbles from the characterizations, plot, and language in the tales, which offer themselves for reading aloud or storytelling with an almost audible shout. With 8 color and 26 black-and-white illustrations by Pinkney, this roundup is as refreshing and down-to-earth as was the first book in the series; and it deserves its place as the crowning conclusion to a historic collection of tales.

Professional Recommendation/Review #2:
CCBC (Cooperative Children's Book Center Choices, 1994)
Lester's incomparable storytelling shines once again in a collection of 39 tales that wholly honors and embraces the African-American oral tradition from which the stories emerged. Vibrant and witty, Lester's language resonates with voices of the past while firmly establishing the stories as tales for today. In his introduction, Lester writes that "storytelling is a human event, an act of creating relationship," and in his storytelling he creates a bond between storyteller and reader that is direct and friendly. Lester also notes in the introduction that while the character of Uncle Remus is sometimes criticized as a stereotype, "it is the same Uncle Remus who preserved the culture through the tales. Without Uncle Remus, how much of black folk culture would have survived?" Lester continues to preserve that culture in this volume of lively tales that are illustrated with Jerry Pinkney's black-and-white drawings, as well as full-color paintings that span across the two-page spread of some stories. Readers familiar with Lester's earlier Uncle Remus collections, The Tales of Uncle Remus (Dial, 1987), More Tales of UncleRemus (Dial, 1988) and Further Tales of Uncle Remus (Dial, 1990) will welcome this collection chronicling additional adventures of Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, Brer Fox and many others, while new readers to the tales will eagerly seek out the predecessors.

Response to Two Professional Reviews (3-4 sentences in your own words):
I agree that the author successfully told different stories to the audience and this book can be enjoyed by many different audiences. This is the fourth book in the series so readers can go back and read the first 3 books if they enjoy this one. These stories can be read voer and over again which is why this book is so great.

Evaluation of Literary Elements (3-4 sentences in your own words):
I liked how this book was set up with different anecdotes. It gives the reader the option to read the entire book or just bits and pieces. The mixture of both colored and black and white photos gies the reader something to look at especially if someone is using this as a read aloud.

Consideration of Instructional Application (3-4 sentences in your own words):
I would use this book for different parts of the classroom. Because it is full of short stories, these stories can be printed and handed to each child to read in groups. It could also be used as a passage to correct grammar and spelling in. I also think this story would be good for an end of the day read aloud because there are enough stories for multiple days, plus the first three books in the series can be used as well.