The Adventures of Peter Cottontail (1914)

In response to Danielx's review:

There are plenty of examples in Burgess where Reddy and other predators catch and eat prey. Of course, they never catch *named* animals; they only catch faceless, generic ones. But even the named animals are often depicted fleeing in terror from Reddy or another predator, and barely escaping. This happens all the time in Burgess; you cannot read much of Burgess and imagine otherwise. In fact, the first edition of Tommy and the Wishing Stone (1915, Century), has an *illustration* of Reddy sitting down to eat a chicken he has caught and killed. It's on page 188. That illustration might only be in the Century edition, which has twice as many illustrations as the Little, Brown and Grosset & Dunlap editions. But whether or not the other editions have the ilustration, they still have the text it illustrates (but the episode might be in a different Tommy title, as some editions split the single original 1915 Century book into three books).

On a lighter note, one of my favorite illustrations in Burgess is of Old Mr. Toad, startled by the sudden appearance of Mr. Blacksnake and leaping in slapstick terror. The caption is, "But poor Old Mr. Toad didn't say Good Morning."

And yes, we are told in Burgess, quite often, that Unc' Billy Possum, Jimmy Skunk, et. al. often enjoy protein themselves; they are always stealing eggs. There is much discussion in Burgess about how predators must eat other animals, and that it is not wrong for them to do so.

I see that Danialx's review has 5 "Likes". Anyone who shares his views of Burgess cannot possibly have read much of it. ( )

While words like "beloved" and "delightful" characterise the Amazon descriptions, with some apology, here is a more jaundiced view. As in most stories for children, the animals are anthropomorphic, but this 1914 book takes it to extremes. What's more, while herbivory and insectivory are deemed perfectly acceptable, carnivory is apparently bad -- all the animals take delight in seeing Reddy Fox unable to find anything to eat day after day, and when they fool him into getting stung by hornets so badly that his eye swells shut, much hilarity ensues. We're never told that Billy Possum, Bobby Coon, and Jimmy Skunk likely eat animal protein as well, and that Ol' Mistah Buzzard has dietary tastes that are especially dubious. Of course this isn't meant to be a biology schoolbook, but it's too bad we can't let the kiddies know that for animals, specialized diets are lifestyles dictated by anatomy and evolution, not a matters of moral choice. ( )