Tar Baby

by Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Deryk (Illustrator)

In the Georgia swamplands and plantations, a cast of anthropomorphic animals enacts daily rituals of pursuit, trickery and escape. In this pre-Loony Toons world of sassy, talking beasts, Brer Rabbit is the hero -- duelling both verbally and physically with those who would eat him, and perpetually in the monstrous shadow of the Tar Baby.The casual publication in 1877 of "The Tar Baby" by Joel Chandler Harris, found Harris his literary vocation. In the following years he developed his own plantation mythology in a series of volumes, narrated by "Uncle Remus", telling colloquial tales of the wily hero Brer Rabbit (an obvious precursor of Bugs Bunny) and his clashes with the villain, Brer Fox. Tar Baby is a collection of some of the finest of these often surreal and grotesque stories, in the original African American dialect, and is presented as a classic of American literature for both adult readers and children of all ages.

Genres: Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2000

About the author

Joel Chandler Harris was an American journalist born in Eatonton, Georgia who wrote the Uncle Remus stories, including Uncle Remus; His Songs and His Sayings, The Folk-Lore of the Old Plantation, (1880), Nights with Uncle Remus (1881 & 1882), Uncle Remus and His Friends (1892), and Uncle Remus and the Little Boy (1905).

The stories, based on the African-American oral storytelling tradition, were revolutionary in their use of dialect and in featuring a trickster hero called Br'er ("Brother") Rabbit, who uses his wits against adversity, though his efforts do not always succeed. The frog is the trickster character in traditional tales in Central and Southern Africa. The stories, which began appearing in the Atlanta Constitution in 1879, were popular among both Black and White readers in the North and South, not least because they presented an idealized view of race relations soon after the Civil War. The first published Brer Rabbit stories were written by President Theodore Roosevelt's uncle, Robert Roosevelt.

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have not idea if I read this in the past but I REALLY enjoyed reading now. It is set in pre-revolutionary China but the story themes and characters relationships are accurate for today. Some people might have issues with the language pattern, but I got used to it quickly.