Flower Fables

by Louisa May Alcott

Overview

Louisa May Alcott was twenty-one when she published this, her first book. A collection of fairy stories and poems she originally told to Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter Ellen, Flower Fables is a charming and delightful achievement from the hand that would eventually craft the timeless classic Little Women. Flower Fables is presented here in large print for easier reading by children and adults of any age.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781481220194
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	12/10/2012
Pages:	84
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.17(d)

About the Author

Louisa May Alcott (1832 -1888) was an American novelist. She is best known for the novel Little Women and its sequels Little Men and Jo's Boys. Little Women was set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts, and published in 1868. This novel is loosely based on her childhood experiences with her three sisters. Alcott's literary success arrived with the publication by the Roberts Brothers of the first part of Little Women: or Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, a semi-autobiographical account of her childhood with her sisters in Concord, Massachusetts. Part two, or Part Second, also known as Good Wives, followed the March sisters into adulthood and their respective marriages. Little Men detailed Jo's life at the Plumfield School that she founded with her husband Professor Bhaer at the conclusion of Part Two of Little Women. Jo's Boys completed the "March Family Saga". In Little Women, Alcott based her heroine "Jo" on herself. But whereas Jo marries at the end of the story, Alcott remained single throughout her life. In her later life, Alcott became an advocate for women's suffrage and was the first woman to register to vote in Concord, Massachusetts, in a school board election. Alcott, along with Elizabeth Stoddard, Rebecca Harding Davis, Anne Moncure Crane, and others, were part of a group of female authors during the Gilded Age who addressed women's issues in a modern and candid manner. Alcott, who continued to write until her death, suffered chronic health problems in her later years. Alcott died of a stroke in Boston, on March 6, 1888, at age 55, two days after visiting her father's deathbed. Her last words were "Is it not meningitis?"

Table of Contents

	The Frost King: or, The Power of Love	3
	Eva's Visit to Fairy-Land	39
	The Flower's Lesson	77
	Lily-Bell and Thistledown	87
	Little Bud	153
	Clover-Blossom	177
	Little Annie's Dream: or, The Fairy Flower	189
	Ripple, the Water-Spirit	213
	Fairy Song	247

Editorial Reviews

Written for Ralph Waldo Emerson's daughter, Ellen, when Alcott was 16, and first published in 1855, these six prosy fairy tales were chosen from a 1992 collection, Louisa May Alcott's Fairy Tales and Fantasy Stories, edited by Daniel Shealy; Shealy provides an informative afterword here. Readers meet a cast of elves, fairies, brownies and sprites with such Shakespearean names as Willy Wisp, Moonbeam and Thistledown, and the children who occasionally dally with them. Thinly disguised morality lessons told in an over-upholstered style, they instruct the audience in the importance of various virtues. In "The Frost King," for example, elves resolve to conquer the ice-hearted ruler of winter through peaceable means ("Let us teach you how beautiful sunshine and love and happy work can make you"). More than a little dated, the stories grow tedious with lofty homilies (e.g., "little Annie dwelt like a sunbeam in her home, each day growing richer in the love of others and happier in herself"). Preiss's (The Pig's Alphabet) garish artwork further hampers an emotional connection to the stories. The lack of tonal subtlety is aggravated by a self-consciously multicultural-esque grouping of fairy folk with oversize but misshapen eyes and bizarrely pointed ears and chins. Even the typeface, which has distractingly flowery ligatures, is overdone. All but the most die-hard Alcott fans can skip this one. Ages 5-12. (June)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Flower Fables is a treasury of six different stories penned by Louisa May Alcott. These old-fashioned fairy tales have been compiled and edited by Daniel Shealy, who has done editing on several Alcott books. The text is very readable, and has magic flavor added via the font's joining together of several letters. Today's children, like many children of the past, will enjoy meeting Alcott's fairies, sentient flowers, and other real and imagined characters.

Illustrator Leah Palmer Preiss has filled the book with delightful and intersting fairies and other creatures. The illustrations are bright and full.Readers may want to watch for the bonuses of quotations and tiny protraits of those who influenced Louisa May Alcott.

This book would make a good bedtime storybook, and like many tales of old, has good morals that children could take away with them perhaps without even realizing there was a lesson involved. The afterword is also interesting as it shares interesting details about Miss Alcott. For example, she wrote these tales when she was 16. Another bonus at the end of the book is the biographies that go along with the quotations and miniature portraits.
--SM Ford

Independent Publisher

Louisa May Alcott's "fairy folk" are back! Best known for her classic books Little Men and Little Women, her equally enchanting fairy tales are now reintroduced to a new generation of readers in this timeless volume of stories beautifully illustrated by the artistic talents of Leah Palmer Preiss with the publication of Flower Fables. This wonderfully delightful collection of six fairy tales and twenty-five newly comissioned illustrations permit the reader to enter ALcott's nature fairyland and meet her fascinating and memorable fairy folk. Flower Fables is a highly recommended addition to all personal, school, and public library mythology, folklore and fairy tale collections.

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