The Mother West Wind Collection, Volume 1

Old Mother West Wind

by Thornton W. Burgess

The eight books in the ‘Mother West Wind’ series were just the beginning of Thornton W. Burgess’s long running, and much beloved, series of children’s nature books about the Green Meadow, the Green Forest, and the Smiling Pool. Young readers, and listene

388 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Thornton W. (Waldo) Burgess (1874-1965), American author, naturalist and conservationist, wrote popular children's stories including the Old Mother West Wind (1910) series. He would go on to write more than 100 books and thousands of short-stories during his lifetime.

Thornton Burgess loved the beauty of nature and its living creatures so much that he wrote about them for 50 years in books and his newspaper column, "Bedtime Stories". He was sometimes known as the Bedtime Story-Man. By the time he retired, he had written more than 170 books and 15,000 stories for the daily newspaper column.

Born in Sandwich, Massachusetts, Burgess was the son of Caroline F. Haywood and Thornton W. Burgess Sr., a direct descendant of Thomas Burgess, one of the first Sandwich settlers in 1637. Thornton W. Burgess, Sr., died the same year his son was born, and the young Thornton Burgess was brought up by his mother in Sandwich. They both lived in humble circumstances with relatives or paying rent. As a youth, he worked year round in order to earn money. Some of his jobs included tending cows, picking trailing arbutus or berries, shipping water lilies from local ponds, selling candy and trapping muskrats. William C. Chipman, one of his employers, lived on Discovery Hill Road, a wildlife habitat of woodland and wetland. This habitat became the setting of many stories in which Burgess refers to Smiling Pool and the Old Briar Patch.

Graduating from Sandwich High School in 1891, Burgess briefly attended a business college in Boston from 1892 to 1893, living in Somerville, Massachusetts, at that time. But he disliked studying business and wanted to write. He moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he took a job as an editorial assistant at the Phelps Publishing Company. His first stories were written under the pen name W. B. Thornton.

Burgess married Nina Osborne in 1905, but she died only a year later, leaving him to raise their son alone. It is said that he began writing bedtime stories to entertain his young son, Thornton III. Burgess remarried in 1911; his wife Fannie had two children by a previous marriage. The couple later bought a home in Hampden, Massachusetts, in 1925 that became Burgess' permanent residence in 1957. His second wife died in August 1950. Burgess returned frequently to Sandwich, which he always claimed as his birthplace and spiritual home.

In 1960, Burgess published his last book, "Now I Remember, Autobiography of an Amateur Naturalist," depicting memories of his early life in Sandwich, as well as his career highlights. That same year, Burgess, at the age of 86, had published his 15,000th story. He died on June 5, 1965, at the age of 91 in Hampden, Massachusetts.

Reviews

[Louie the Mustache Matos]

The Old Mother West Wind books were written before the Bedtime Stories collection, but my father read to my brother and I from the Bedtime stories, so those were my entry into Thornton Burgess' world of nature. It is only after Dad completed the Bedtime Stories that he bought the Old Mother West Wind stuff.

When I bought my first Kindle, the Thornton Waldo Burgess collection was one of my first additions to my digital library. In this edition, there are four books: Old Mother West Wind, Mother West Wind's Children, Mother West Wind's Animal Friends, and Mother West Wind's Neighbors.

The stories are all nature stories featuring animals of the Green Meadow, Green Forest, the Babbling Brook, and the Smiling Pool. The animals behave in very human ways to serve as substitutes for human behavior. The trope worked so well that Burgess wrote hundreds of stories involving these animals. Especially helpful were the artists that added to the stories by injecting realistic characteristics to help tell the stories. George Kerr was the first of a couple trusted artists that became Burgess's partners.

[Steve Voiles]

If it weren't for comic books and Mother West Wind, I never would have learned to read!

[Nancy Waggoner]

I read all these books individually in the first and second grades. I loved them so.

[Aaron]

Rediscovered these gems after 4 decades. Definitely the most influential stories about animals I read as a kid, capturing humor and behavior. But also the variety of animals, which obsessed me as a kid as much as the variety of musical instruments. I remember there were amazing illustrations in the original collections which resembled wood carvings by Durer crossed with R. Crumb. Knockout.

[10TX]

These stories are fantastic.

This edition has several errors throughout, but these stories make amazing bed time stories for kids 4-8 yrs old.