The Bremen Town Musicians: And Other Animal Tales from Grimm

by Doris Orgel, Bert Kitchen (Illustrator)

Six delightful stories, some familiar, some, less so, freshly translated by a noted author and sumptuously illustrated by a renowned artist.

There have been many collections of tales from the Brothers Grimm over the years but few as engaging, and as handsome, as this one. Doris Orgel, who treasured these stories as a child in Vienna, has chosen six of her favorites, all featuring animal characters, and brought them to life for contemporary audiences. In addition to the title story the collection includes The Hare and the Hedgehog, King of the Birds, How the Birds and Beasts Went to War, The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids, and The Fox and the Geese.

The stories are accompanied by marvelously detailed illustrations by Bert Kitchen, who previously collaborated with Ms. Orgel on her collection of Aesop tales, The Lion and the Mouse.

Genres: Picture Books, Childrens

48 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2004

About the author

Doris Orgel is a children's writer. She was born in Vienna, Austria. As a child, she and her family fled to Yugoslavia and finally the U.S. during the rise of the Nazi party in Europe. She attended Radcliffe College from 1946 too 1948, and graduated cum laude from Barnard College in 1950.

In her career, Ms. Orgel has written and translated several fairy and folk tales, as well as served as a translator for other authors. Prior to her work as a children's writer, Orgel was in magazine and book publishing. Her first original book, Sarah’s Room (1963) was published under the pseudonym Doris Adelberg. It was also republished in England and in Switzerland in German. In 1960, Ms. Orgel received the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award for her translation of Willhelm Hauff's Dwarf Long-Nose (1960). Her book The Devil in Vienna (1978) received a Phoenix Award Honor in 1998. Ms. Orgel has also worked as a children’s book reviewer for "The New York Times".

She is married to Dr. Shelley Orgel; has three children: Paul, Laura, and Jeremy; two daughters-in-law: Sharon Lamb and Ling Chen Orgel; three grandchildren: Willy, Jennifer, and Julian; and three granddogs: Woof, Buster, and Otto. She lives in New York City.


For more information, please see http://www.answers.com/topic/doris-orgel

Reviews

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three (!) notes give interesting information about these stories. They're retold, mostly from the German*, in the form of fables, with brief individual end-notes for even more enrichment. And, of course, the illustrations by Kitchen are gorgeous.

A book to read with a child when he is four, and five, and for him to read again when he is six, and seven....

*The Hare and the Hedgehog is retold from plattdeutsch.

[Stefanie Burns · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story has severally Grimm's fairy tales which the author has translated and mildly altered. The note at the beginning of the story explains this. The tales are plainly told and children should easily be able to visualize the events based on the words and the given illustrations. The illustrations are rich and detailed and accurately portray events from the tales. Nice version of Grimm's tales. I was not familiar with any of these fairy tales and thoroughly enjoyed them. The morals were given in a final sentence or two at the end of each tale. Very helpful as morals can be difficult for children to determine.

[Stacy Renee (LazyDayLit) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A trio of old animals decide to continue being useful in their own way in this fun fable.

Read for B&R-1st LA

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great stories and great author notes

[Emily · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to give this book a higher rating. But the Jewish author slipped in some feminist propaganda and implied that prayer is pointless. Subversive garbage.

[Ashley Cochran]

This tale is about a donkey, a rooster, a hound, and a cat who all feel lonely and want to get away before they are killed or hurt by their owners. The donkey tells each animal that he is headed to Bremen to become a town-musician. All the other animals follow. It gets dark outside while they are traveling so they stop under a tree and begin to stay the night until the rooster notices a light in the distance. The light ends up being from a house that robbers live in and the animals “perform” and scare them all away. They go inside the house and eat the food and go to sleep until one of the robbers come back. When the robber comes inside, the animals attack him and send him running back into the woods to his robber friends. He tells the other robbers that a witch lives there now that attacked him and they are not going back. I would probably only use this book if we were talking about fairy tales or folk tales. I do not see myself using this book often in my classroom.

[Haley Bisesi-adkins · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the Animal Musicians story and it was pretty cute. Although it was not exactly what I expected from the title, there was no singing really, it was still a good short story. It taught the reader to make decisions for themselves and stand up for what is theirs.
Grim fairy tales always seemed like good stories to me as a child but as an adult it does seem some of their stories could be a bit graphic for some children. This story have some scenes of the animals talking about owners abusing them and of the animals attacking robbers. Overall, I would make sure this is appropriate for children before sharing it with them.

[Theresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

a retelling of a story of finding ones place, and finding a family to belong to