The Dream Coach

by Anne Parrish, Dillwyn Parrish

The Dream Coach is a children's book by Anne Parrish. It contains four fairytale-like stories linked by the theme of a Dream Coach which travels around the world bringing dreams to children. The stories are: "The Seven White Dreams of the King's Daughter", "Goran's Dream", "A Bird Cage With Tassels of Purple and Pearls (Three Dreams of a Little Chinese Emperor)", and ""King" Philippe's Dream". The book was first published in 1924 and was a Newbery Honor recipient in 1925.

Genres: Fantasy, Short Stories, Childrens, Fairy Tales, Juvenile

143 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1924

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Three-time Newbery Honor winner, Anne Parrish came from a distinguished and artistic Philadelphia family. Her younger brother was author Dillwyn Parrish. Parrish trained at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women, although she later chose a career in literature. In 1923 her first romantic novel, Pocketful of Poses, was published simultaneously to her children's book, Knee-High to a Grasshopper, illustrated by her brother Dillwyn. Their collaboration was followed by 'Lustres' (1924). In 1925 'The Perennial Bachelor' was the eighth best-selling book for the entire year according to the New York Times and won the Harper Prize from her publisher. Her 1928 bestseller 'All Kneeling' was made into the 1950 film Born to Be Bad, starring Joan Fontaine and Robert Ryan.

Throughout most of her life, Anne Parrish traveled extensively and on a trip to Switzerland, she and her brother purchased Le Paquis, a cottage in a meadow overlooking Lake Geneva not far from Lausanne, between Vevey and Chexbres.

In 1915, she married industrialist Charles Albert Corliss, residing in New York City. Her husband died in 1936. Two years later, she married poet and novelist Josiah Titzell (aka Frederick Lambeck). They made their home in Redding, Connecticut. After he died in 1943, she continued to live there for the rest of her life.

Reviews

[Mir]

I'm guessing she means coach as in



and not



although I would certainly be interested in reading a book about someone who coached dreams.

[Josiah · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fresh, original books have long held favor with the Newbery Committee. What would the award's history be without Wanda Gág's Millions of Cats (1929), Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings's The Secret River (1956), Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time (1963), Sylvia Louise Engdahl's Enchantress from the Stars (1971), or Christopher Paul Curtis's Bud, Not Buddy (2000)? The Dream Coach, a 1925 Newbery Honoree, fits that tradition of creative storytelling. The Coach is the vehicle by which angels deliver dreams to our sleeping minds. Dreams aren't random assortments of images and feelings, leftover scraps from our day; they are works of art custom designed to impart the comfort or instruction we need. In this book we accompany the Dream Coach on four of its stops, to see what blessings it brings.

The Princess awakens the morning of her fifth birthday to a procession of personal assistants primping her to look her best. No detail may be overlooked in marking this grand occasion. The day's prolonged formality is wearisome for the Princess, who is permitted only to stand quietly, receive the adoration, and be sent early to bed so the adults can celebrate in their own way. The Princess's enjoyment of her day is never considered, but the angels clamor to rectify this with a plethora of soothing dreams. The Princess dreams she is a lovely daisy in an open field; a small white cloud free to blow here and there across the sky; a gentle lamb cavorting in a meadow of emerald green; a butterfly silently flitting in a lush jungle; a delicate egg tucked in a warm nest beneath her mother bird's breast feathers; and a Christmas snowflake, happy to end its brief life as a unique gift in remembrance of the immortal Christ Child. The Princess's future of royal confinement will be tempered by her fond recollection of these dreams.

In Norway, six-year-old Goran is nervous at the prospect of his grandmother leaving him at home for a day while she goes to town and stocks up on winter supplies. A snowstorm arrives and Goran fears his grandmother will be unable to return for a long time. Distressed as he is, the warm meal Goran prepares himself causes him to doze off, and the objects and animals around him are able to speak in his dream. The Queen of Clubs is no longer a playing card, but a life-sized woman giving orders to Goran and her other subjects. She pretends she knows how to properly treat Goran's Snowman, but he rapidly melts inside the house, and the attempt to get him back outside results in quite an ordeal for Goran, the Queen, and her subjects. The dream lasts just long enough that when Goran awakes, he takes heart at the sight of his grandmother returning home.

Onward the Dream Coach glides to China, where the child emperor watches in disinterest as his servants try to entertain him. The Little Emperor must not be left wanting for stimulation. He deems no diversion suitable until he spots a brown bird flapping and singing in the trees. Servants catch and cage the bird, but the imprisoned creature soon loses his joyful demeanor, and the Little Emperor forgets about his new pet. The bird would spend his remaining days under lock and key but for the Little Emperor's dream, in which gigantic birds keep him in a cage. How awful to cry for help and have your words be evaluated solely for their tonal charm; how humiliating to be poked and have birds steal your garments for their beauty. Waking up, the Little Emperor resolves to free his brown bird the next day, but another dream shows him the death sentence it is for a helpless creature to be released into the cold barrenness of winter. At first sign of spring he turns his bird loose, and energy once more fills the pretty winged animal with the beauty that caused the Little Emperor to want him in the first place. The bird's ebullient song is plentiful compensation for losing him as a pet.

We end with eight-year-old Philippe of rural France, visiting his Grandmother Marianne and Grandfather Joseph at their home. Philippe makes the trip primarily to see his Uncle Pablôt, a man of the world who tells many stories about his travels. Philippe listens with interest during and after supper, but the boy is young and the hour is late, and as his eyes close, the evening morphs into a fantasy of nature's powers. His Grandmother is now Grandmother Rain, who takes Philippe on a journey over river and lake to the ocean, where all water flows from. Philippe is equally enchanted by Uncle Wind, who has his fun with humans but also offers comfort, cooling fevered brows and entertaining children. Grandfather Snow has a frosty disposition, but collaborates with Uncle Wind now and then to coat the land with snow and ice, beauty unrivaled in all the natural world. Philippe's little cousin Avril represents spring in the dream, showing him a garden of splendid color and warmth, which returns every year in season. Nature is a happy servant to boys and girls, but does its best work when treated benevolently. The vivid lesson is one Philippe will not likely lose sight of.

A book of gorgeous language and thoughts, The Dream Coach was probably a decent choice for a Newbery Honor. I'd rate it two and a half stars and considered rounding to three, but the narrative isn't as crisp or profound as the themes behind it. My favorite quote is from the personified flowers to Philippe: "Do not forget us when you are grown up and your mind is crowded with worries and cares and a lot of things that will seem more important to you than they really are. Keep a place for us in your mind and heart, and we will repay you in our mysterious way a hundredfold and more. Do as we ask; treasure beauty, purity, and truth—for though you may love us now, you will not understand the full importance of our message until you have grown up." To focus on life's responsibilities to the exclusion of embracing its joys is to squander the finite, priceless years you have, and no human tragedy is greater than that. We must not ignore the dreams that fill our minds at night, for whether they are from angels or our own subconscious, we have not forever to heed them. The Dream Coach is a solid piece of literature with a message for anyone with an open heart. I hope young readers continue to engage with this book.

[Abigail · Rating 2 out of 5]

Published in 1924, brother and sister Anne and Dillwyn Parrish's The Dream Coach was one of two Newbery Honor Books selected in 1925 - the other being Anne Carroll Moore's Nicholas: A Manhattan Christmas Story - and follows the eponymous Dream Coach as it visits four children in different parts of the world. Although written almost a quarter-of-a-century into the twentieth century, it hearkens back to the Victorian fairy-tale fare of the nineteenth, both in its vision of the innocent child, and in its exotic portrait of the east.

It opens with the brief poem, The Dream Coach, originally contained in the authors' 1923 book, Knee-High To A Grasshopper : "If you have been unhappy all the day, / Wait patiently until the night: / When in the sky the gentle stars are bright / The Dream Coach comes to carry you away." Four original fairy-tales follow, each featuring a child's experiences with the Dream Coach.

The first of these is The Seven White Dreams of the King's Daughter, in which little Princess Angelica Mary Delphine Violet Candida Pamelia Petronella Victoire Veronica Monica Anastasia Yvonne (and so on) experiences a singularly unhappy birthday, hemmed in by the excessive formalities of court life, and goes to bed crying. When an angel witnesses her unhappiness, he and his fellows send her seven white dreams, and the princess becomes: a daisy in a field, a little white cloud in the blue sky, a little white lamb skipping through a field of lilies of the valley, a white butterfly floating in the breeze, a small white egg in a soft nest, and a snowflake dancing. All experiences involving freedom in the wide world - everything she is denied is her waking life.

The second tale is Goran's Dream, which follows the adventures of a little Norwegian boy, living with his grandmother over the waters of a deep fjord. When grandmother must go to the village to buy their winter supplies, six-year-old Goran is left on his own, entrusted with the care of the animals. Worried that the snow, which starts shortly after she leaves, will prevent his grandmother from returning, Goran distracts himself by building a snowman. Later, lulled by the warmth inside his little house, he falls asleep, dreaming that his animals - Nanna the goat, Gustava the hen, Mejau the cat - as well as the house geraniums and the old grandfather clock, can all speak, and that the snowman and the Queen of Clubs (from a colorful playing card he once found) have come alive. After a surreal party that resembles a scene from Alice's in Wonderland , Goran awakens to find that he had fallen asleep in his chair.

The third selection - which has some strong thematic similarities to Hans Christian Andersen's The Nightingale - is A Bird Cage With Tassels of Purple and Pearls (Three Dreams of a Little Chinese Emperor), in which the Dream Coach, rather than relieving sadness, or distracting from worry, must educate and correct. In this tale, the young emperor has imprisoned a little songbird, who, in sorrow at its captivity, will not sing. In a series of dreams, the emperor experiences life in a cage, surrounded by massive birds many times his size, as well as the hardship of looking for food in a barren winter landscape, and the terror of fleeing from a predator. Now able to empathize with his captive, the little emperor grows kinder, and when summer comes, he releases the bird.

The fourth and final story is "King" Philippe's Dream, in which a young French boy, visiting his grandparents, and meeting his far-traveling Uncle Pablôt for the first time, falls asleep towards the end of his stay, dreaming that all his kin are transformed into different natural forces. Grandmother, who refers to the rising river as her son, becomes Grandmother Rain, while Uncle Pablôt becomes Uncle Wind. Grandfather is changed to Grandfather Snow, while little cousin Avril becomes Spring herself. Still sleeping and dreaming, Phillipe is returned to his parents...


The tales contained in The Dream Coach were mildly entertaining, but I found myself wondering, as I read through them, what extraordinary quality the Newbery Committee discovered in them, that made them worthy of special recognition.. Mild, sweet (sometimes too sweet), a little bit exotic (the "Chinese" selection), they are better in the summary, than in the reading. Then again, I'm generally not a great fan of Victorian fairy-fare. The black and white illustrations, both full and partial page, were probably the most appealing aspect of this book, which is apparently the first of three Newbery Honors for Anne Parrish! I'll have to see if I like Floating Island or The Story Of Appleby Capple any better.

[Kerstin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Newbery Honor 1925

This is a quasi fantasy book where the dream coach visits children and we "read" their dreams. The stories are fine, but I didn't think they were memorable enough to revisit them anytime in the future.

[Lynette Caulkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Parrish did a marvelous job of creating fairy-tale style stories that capture perfectly the silliness and surreal nature of dreams, as well as an unconscious slip from wakefulness to dreaming. Young children would enjoy having these read as bed-time chapters.

I'd give this 4, even 4.5 stars, were it not for the 2 or 3 occurrences of xenophobic cultural slurs in the early portion (typical of many books from this time frame) - as well as the way the last chapter becomes rather preachy in terms of caring for nature. She lost her sweet, silly, surreal, heart-warming tone there. But it's certainly nothing to put you off from the book.

This book is also available on LibriVox as a free audiobook.

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5-3.0 stars. This one's a weird one, it's written by and illustrated by two of Maxfield Parrish's cousins, Anne and Dilwyn - and yes, there is an art deco feel to it, both text and pictures. It's weird enough that I wonder if Neil Gaiman encountered it although his mind is strange enough not to need this as inspiration. It begins with a poem (excerpted from the author's "Knee-High to a Grasshopper") about a coach and its driver who carry dreams to children, beautiful dreams to the good and nightmares to the bad, and he's helped by several angels. The poem's followed by four dreams which make up the rest of the book. The first is a series of 7 white dreams given to "the King's Little Daughter" who may be one of the most neglected children in literary history. She's been looking forward to her birthday but isn't included in its celebration; she is fed bread and milk and sent to bed early. The dreams are very sweet and become part of her character. The dream of a young Norwegian boy, Goran, follows and is just on the cusp of being a nightmare. He's 6 and has been left alone so his grandmother can go to market. He's left in charge of the house, a goat, a cat, a chicken, and a clock (to wind). To complicate things it snows and he has fun making a snowman, but then worries grandmother won't make it home. He has his supper accompanied by a playing card, Queen of Hearts. All of these come to life in his dream and he is completely stressed out. This is followed by the dream of the Little Chinese Emperor, the one unrelentingly racist story in the book: descriptions, names, perceived customs, etc. This one is a nightmare brought on when the boy imprisons a little brown bird; he dreams that he in turn is made prisoner by birds. This last dream/nightmare is the longest and is that of a French boy, Philippe, who dreams that his relatives are Grandmother Rain, Grandfather Snow, and Uncle Wind. I read this for my 2017 Reading Challenge and my Newbery Challenge (Honor Book 1925).

[Joy · Rating 2 out of 5]

1925 Newbery Honor Book

This book is actually public domain (the copyright was not renewed so it expired) so it can be found online to read for free.

I was not terribly impressed with this book. It starts with a poem about the Dream Coach, a magical coach that carries dreams to all the children of the world (think Santa Claus meets the Sandman). Bad children are punished with nightmares but sometimes good children accidentally get nightmares too.

The rest of the book is four short stories of the children who receive dreams on the route of the Dream Coach. The first is a princess who has a rather dull fifth birthday so the angels decide to give her some special dreams. The second is a boy who dreams of visiting a queen with his snowman who almost melts. The third is a boy emperor who is taught about the bird that he keeps in a cage and the last one is a boy who dreams that his relatives are elements of nature (rain, wind, etc...) and that he is a king.

It was a little "out there" for my tastes (and considering I love science fiction and fantasy, I have a pretty high tolerance for weirdness). The only story I really liked at all was the one with the emperor.

[Heather · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of the more outstanding of the early Newbery Honor books. The premise is good, but the stories are not very memorable. Also, the descriptions found in the story of the Little (Chinese) Emperor are very culturally insensitive. For example: "his little round face, as round and yellow as a full moon" or "The Little Emperor opened his eyes and saw the face of Princess Autumn Cloud bending over him, as yellow as a lemon." I'm guessing Anne Parrish never met anyone from China.

[Thomas Bell · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very random book, but that's to be expected I guess from a book about peoples' dreams. Anne Parrish thinks she's a poet, but she's not. You can also see her attempts at making the dreams kind of magical, but she fails miserably. Then at the very end it turns into a 'Save The Earth' kind of book. Weird.

[Kirsten Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Dream Coach opens with a short poem with whimsical illustrations, followed by a framing narrative. The driver of the Dream Coach lives in heaven, and assisted by angels, brings dreams to people on earth, especially children. Naughty children might be punished with nightmares (maybe a good child gets a bad dream by mistake every now and then). The driver of the Dream Coach can also reward good deeds or teach lessons.

What follows are 4 stories of dreams brought by the driver of the Dream Coach and his angel assistants. A five-year-old princess who lives in splendor gets seven beautiful dreams. A six-year-old boy in a remote cottage in Norway is watching the cottage alone, and finds that in his dreams, many things have come to life. A boy emperor in China learns a lesson about not keeping wild birds in a cage, and finally a boy in France has a dream in which his family members personify rain, snow, wind, and spring.

The dreams of The Dream Coach are fairly wild, as one might expect dreams to be. My favorite was the boy in Norway. His dream reminded me of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and The Snowman cartoon where the snowman comes to life and flies through the air with the boy who made him (because, Spoiler Alert - some of characters in the dream are convinced that the boy's snowman in the story just MUST come sit inside by the fire!).

I think children listening to these stories today might find them a bit odd (maybe readers found them odd in 1924 also?), but they might make for a fun bedtime story. 4 stars.
Content Considerations:

Some dated ethnic/racial language - The princess has servants (slaves?) that are described as something like "blacks wearing only a turban and a loincloth". In the story that takes place in China, people are referred to as having slanted eyes and yellow faces.

This is Newbery book 112 of 434 for me (total # as of 2023).

[Jen · Rating 2 out of 5]

*sigh* Even at a short page count, this book was a slog to get through. It was so strange. And, of course, dreams usually are, but the overbearing, condescending narrator here and the inconsistency of the four individual stories affected by the dream coach made this feel more like a weird dream that you just can't wake up and get out of than a weird dream that you wake up and laugh about.

We read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in one of my book clubs lately, and discussed why that book had become an instant classic and kept its popularity for all these years. This book emphasizes the why for me. This book comes from the early days of children's literature as it's own thing, and so many who tried to write specifically for children missed the mark. While there are some gems in the early years of the ALA Youth Awards, there is also a lot that wouldn't have been published, much less honored, were it up against the competition in today's market.

[Lynette Caulkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

The Dream Coach was named a Newbery Honor Book in 1925. Anne Parrish's original stories of dream adventures hold fairy-tale charm that is sure to delight young children, perfect for bedtime reading one chapter at a time. Her tales capture the surreal silliness and strangeness of the dream state and the way our minds slip into that realm without our awareness.

I'd give this 4, even 4.5 stars, were it not for a couple things. There are a couple of phrases early on that betray the cultural insensitivity that used to be acceptable in children's literature in the U.S. Also, Parrish loses her silly, carefree, heart-warming tone at the end when she veers into a lecture on caring for nature that gets a bit cloying. It's nothing to ruin the book, though. :)

[Ron · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was one of the early Newbery Honor books. I'm not even sure this book could get published today. It is the a story of the dream coach (think carriage drawn by horses) and the dreams that it takes to a small group of people. If it had been much longer, I'm not sure I could have finished it.

[Alyson · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️

[Jenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

So very insipid. And the chapter with the Chinese Emperor could not possibly get more racist.

[Melinda · Rating 2 out of 5]

A story that definitely shows its age - very flowery prose that describes four fantastical dreams, brought about by the Dream Coach.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this were cute and parts were confusing. It definitely felt disjointed as it hopped from dream to dream. And I was super angry for the poor princess in the first set of stories.

[Desiree']

1925 Newbery honor book

[Angie Lisle · Rating 1 out of 5]

My very large extended family read this book together when I was a kid; I'm a child of the 80s and my childhood response to this book was gag me with a silver spoon, which upset one of my older cousins because she adored this book. She was a very princessy sort of gal; I was that kid who liked to read in trees. I've always been a right proper heathen, even when I was little.

My opinion hasn't changed much as an adult (ha).

I can overlook the strong Christian undertones. It's the purple prose that annoys me. It works in the poetry scattered through the stories but it's annoying within the stories themselves, giving the text a sing-song quality. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me.

The first story, The Seven White Dreams of the King's Little Daughter, spends a lot of time talking about getting dressed and dreaming. The second and third stories, Goran's Dream and A Bird Cage with Tassels of Purple and Pearls, dishes out a bit of cool information about Norway and China. The fourth story, "King" Philippe's Dream, is a long-winded attempt to teach kids that nature serves humans. Blech.

Better collections of morality tales exist. Read them instead.

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three stories in this book range mostly from "what's the point?" to "please, just no", with only hints of greatness, but the fourth (which occupies nearly half the book) is a wonderful little tightly-plotted fantasia that deserves a reissue - possibly as a lavishly illustrated picture book, if any pictures could live up to the descriptions.

I would rate this book far, far above Tales from Silver Lands, the painfully whitewashed collection of South American folktales which beat it out for the 1925 Newbery Medal. It's a shame that Tales from Silver Lands is still in print while The Dream Coach has fallen out of copyright, but the latter fact does mean that you can read it, complete with the original ink illustrations, on the University of Pennsylvania website under the "Celebration of Women Writers" heading. (I'm not sure if Goodreads will leave the link in place, hence the specifics of how to google it.) The fourth story, of which I've spoken so highly, begins on page 87.

[Monica Fastenau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read the full review here: http://newberyandbeyond.com/newbery-r...

The book is made up of five stories of the dreams of children around the world, and it’s framed by the story of the dream coach itself. I love the idea of that, and I can see parents in the 20s reading this to their kids as a bedtime story. The story is helped along by some really nice illustrations by Dillwyn Parrish.

Unfortunately, this book suffers from 1920s racism. What I mean by that is, although The Dream Coach doesn’t come right out and say racist things (and one of the main characters is, in fact, not white), it’s filled with the kind of stereotypes that make modern readers uncomfortable.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

A stage coach driver delivers dreams to people. A princess has a sad birthday, so seven angels deliver her seven pleasant dreams. Goran has a dream in which all the inanimate objects in his world come to life, including a snowman he built, which almost melts. The Little Emperor traps a bird in a cage, and then he dreams birds have trapped him in a cage. Philippe has a strange dream where his grandmother lets a river into her house, and then all his relatives become weather.

I found this book to be a little strange. At first, the dreams kind of made sense with the people who had them, but I didn't quite understand the connection with the last story.

[Natalie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't have words.

I don't get this book.

I don't understand it's purpose or why it was written. I don't understand why it won an honor. I have no clue.

When I read these old Newbery Books, I feel very sad for children of the era and I thank GOD that I was born in the era of Harry Potter, Skulduggery Pleasant, Ann Rinaldi, The Last Apprentice, Shannon Hale and any number of excellent series and authors that carried me through childhood and made books my best friends.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I knew about this book when I was a child or even when mine were younger. It would be a fun book to read aloud at bedtime as you drift off into dream land. It's been criticized for being outdated and racist, but this could easily be edited when reading aloud without hurting the story. A very good read.

[Linds · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twas cute. I don't know what more to say than that, but it’s legitimately very cute. I feel like it’d be good to read sections of it to a kid before bedtime to clear the room of monsters and bad thoughts. There’s some light poetry, some drawings, and then stories of the types of dreams different characters have. They’re very fanciful stories, and… cuuuute.

[Krista the Krazy Kataloguer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Newbery Award honor book for 1925.

[Kristen · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just didn't like this at all. Having to read it online didn't help. It is dated. It is preachy, mostly the short stories about children dreaming around the world are boring.

[Damaris]

Newbery Honor Book 1925

[Jade Lauron]

Read from online. http://digital.library.upenn.edu/wome...