Friday, December 30, 2022

Tricksters. Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl

To finish up this week of rabbit tricksters, I wanted to share this book which features one of my favorite children's book authors AND one of my favorite children's book illustrators: Bruh Rabbit and the Tar Baby Girl by Virginia Hamilton, with illustrations by James Ransome:


Signed by James Ransome! "Keep reading!"


And he dedicated the book to Virginia Hamilton; she died before this book was published:


Wolf tries a "scarey-crow" first, but that doesn't fool Rabbit, so next he makes a tar-baby girl, and that works: Rabbit shouts at the girl when she won't speak to him, and then he gets stuck:


But of course Rabbit manages to get away, famously getting Wolf to throw him exactly where he wants to go: into the briar-patch!


As Hamilton explains in the note at the back of the story, she started with a Gullah version recorded in the Sea Islands of South Carolina, and she includes a few Gullah turns of phrase which she explains in the note.

You can find out more about both Virginia Hamilton and James Ransome at Wikipedia, and there are lots more of their books available at Internet Archive: I highly recommend them both.

by Virginia Hamilton




No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are limited to Google accounts. You can also email me at laurakgibbs@gmail.com or find me at Twitter, @OnlineCrsLady.