Swamp Angel

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful tale, beautiful illustrations.
Review: "Swamp Angel" by Anne Isaacs is adorable. It is written in the tradition of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox, only featuring Swamp Angel and Thundering Tarnation, the Bear, who are not exactly best friends, as she feeds him to every citizen in Tennessee. However, it is appropriate for grade-school children, and the illustrations are wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful tale, beautiful illustrations.
Review: "Swamp Angel" by Anne Isaacs is adorable. It is written in the tradition of Paul Bunyan and Babe, the Blue Ox, only featuring Swamp Angel and Thundering Tarnation, the Bear, who are not exactly best friends, as she feeds him to every citizen in Tennessee. However, it is appropriate for grade-school children, and the illustrations are wonderful.

Rating:
Summary: What's not to like?
Review: A truly enjoyable folktale. With Paul Zelinsky's inventive and endlessly amusing illustrations, the book tells as well as it views. With sentences like, "Varmint, I'm much obliged for that pelt you're carryin'", Swamp Angel's showdown with the bear Thundering Tarnation is of epic proportions. Zelinsky has truly outdone himself in his portrayals of their fight. There are thousands of tiny illustrations hidden on each page for kids to discover and delight in. The fight itself is about good old-fashioned wrassling, and it's a joy to watch. Zelinsky painted his illustrations on actual wood veneer, hoping to give the book a folk-art feel of some sort. The result is a beautiful story that adults and kids will both enjoy. As I might have given away, I'm a fan. book could easily be paired with another tall tales, possibly that of the other gigantic hero Paul Bunyun or the great John Henry. Both would fit in well with this story, though Swamp Angel owes perhaps most of her telling to Pecos Bill more than anyone else.

Rating:
Summary: What's not to like?
Review: A truly enjoyable folktale. With Paul Zelinsky's inventive and endlessly amusing illustrations, the book tells as well as it views. With sentences like, "Varmint, I'm much obliged for that pelt you're carryin'", Swamp Angel's showdown with the bear Thundering Tarnation is of epic proportions. Zelinsky has truly outdone himself in his portrayals of their fight. There are thousands of tiny illustrations hidden on each page for kids to discover and delight in. The fight itself is about good old-fashioned wrassling, and it's a joy to watch. Zelinsky painted his illustrations on actual wood veneer, hoping to give the book a folk-art feel of some sort. The result is a beautiful story that adults and kids will both enjoy. As I might have given away, I'm a fan. book could easily be paired with another tall tales, possibly that of the other gigantic hero Paul Bunyun or the great John Henry. Both would fit in well with this story, though Swamp Angel owes perhaps most of her telling to Pecos Bill more than anyone else.

Rating:
Summary: A modern day tall tale
Review: Angelica Longrider is known to the settlers of Tennessee as "Swamp Angel". She is a giant girl-turned-woman who helps settlers in need. A giant bear is eating all of the settlers' food and they cannot stop him. Swamp Angel grabs the bear and throws him into the sky, where his imprint can still be seen today as a constellation. He does not come back down, so Swamp Angel grabs a tornado and lassos the bear from the sky. The bear and Swamp Angel wrestle for many days and many nights. They even wrestle in their sleep. Swamp Angel snores so loudly that a tree falls down, killing the bear. The people rejoiced and ate many foods made from bear, including bear cake. Swamp Angel took the bear hide to Montana and lay it down like a rug. We now call that area Shortgrass Prairie. This story reminds me of a modern day Paul Bunyan. It is nice to have a tall tale with a female hero. The illustrations are unique and they add a lot to the story, showing things that Swamp Angel did that were not in the text. I recommend this book to all readers.

Rating:
Summary: Tall, tall story! Great fun!
Review: Excellent book for a young reader. Very much in the tradition of Paul-Bunyan-style tall tales. The hero this time is a heroine, nicknamed Swamp Angel, with the strength to rid early-days Tennessee of a giant bear called Thundering Tarnation. Like the best tall tales, this one is full of wonderfully humorous exaggerations, all wonderfully illustrated on every page. Delightful and entertaining book for both boys and girls.

Rating:
Summary: THE BEST STORY EVER
Review: This is the funniest picture book I have ever seen. You will want to read it over and over. If you buy one for all of your friends, they will love you! Anne Isaacs has created a new American Classic. Her story is both hilarious and memorable. I think it is especially good for young women to see that women and not just men can be main characters of tall tale stories. But this is not a book just for kids, everyone that I know has read this has remembered it forever. So go read it!

Rating:
Summary: I really liked Tarnation!
Review: WARNING!!This review may contain Spoilers!

This story starts out by telling about the birth of a young girl who is amazingly big for her age. No one knows that she will become a great woodswoman since she cannot climb a tree at birth without help:). As she grows older she saves her town numerous times with her strength earning her the name "Swamp Angel".

When a mean bear comes to town many hunters try to capture it before it causes anymore damage.(One is Swamp Angel) Eventually she does capture the bear, named Tarnation, and kills him. Call me a sucker for a happy,happy ending, but I was hoping Tarnation would give up his evil ways and use his strength for good. And then they could have all lived...well you know what I mean.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful stuff!
Review: What a wonderful book! I love to read this book as much as my daughter (19 months) loves to have it read (and boy, that's rare)! The language is delightful, the text is funny, and the illustrations are wondrous! Every child in America should have a copy of this book.

Rating:
Summary: A modern classic of epic proportions
Review: What fun to have a tall tale that features a woman--and such a capable woman at that! Anne Isaacs has written a yarn that seems somehow to have been in the pantheon all along--much like Howard Pyles' "Pepper and Salt" stories, "Swamp Angel" is new as far as children's stories go, but has all the elements of the classic stories and so seems older and as wonderfully distinctive as the tales that have been around for generations.

Isaacs tells us all about one red-headed, freckled young woman named Angelica Longrider. From the first, we know we are in for a wild ride when we see the picture of her rather startled-looking parents holding an enormous but contented baby--the text tells us calmly that Angelica was "scarcely taller than her mother and couldn't climb a tree without help." Things start moving at a pell-mell pace when we find out that a destructive black bear has so annoyed folks all around the Appalachian mountains of Tennessee that a reward has been offered for his hide. Angelica sets up to whup that bear and means to do the job right.

The fight between Angelica and the bear is a wondrous portion of the story, told with great good humor, a number of winks at the reader, and the astonishing illustrations of Paul O. Zelinsky. "Swamp Angel" may well be Zelinsky's masterpiece. The pictures have the flavor of early American folk art, combined to great effect with Zelinsky's usual eye for telling detail and gorgeous use of color. They fit the style of the story so well and complement the action so sufficiently that it's as though Isaacs and Zelinsky are two halves of the same person. Rarely do the visions of both author and illustrator dovetail as cleanly as they do here, and it's our great good luck as readers that Isaacs and Zelinsky found each other. Three cheers for "Swamp Angel!"