The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit

by Jerry Pinkney (Illustrator), Julius Lester

A retelling of the Afro-American tales about the adventures and misadventures of Brer Rabbit and his friends and enemies.

Genres: Fiction, Childrens, Classics, Short Stories, Folklore, Animals, Humor

176 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jerry Pinkney was an American illustrator and writer of children's literature. Pinkney illustrated more than 100 books, including picture books, nonfiction titles and novels. Pinkney's works addressed diverse themes and were usually done in watercolors. He was the recipient of five Caldecott Honor books and the winner of the Caldecott Medal for The Lion and the Mouse. He also won the Coretta Scott King Award five times, the Coretta Scott King Honor four times, and was nominated for the prestigious international Hans Christian Anderson Award.

Reviews

[Julie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

One third of the way into this read aloud, my youngest child leaned over and said, “What page are we on?”

I looked down and said, “Fifty-one. Why?”

She said, “Because you're reading it too fast. Slow down.”

I wasn't surprised. I mean. . . really. Have you read this?

Before I go any further, I want to clarify something: this particular rendition of THE TALES OF UNCLE REMUS isn't “your grandmother's Br'er Rabbit stories.”

Now, I don't know exactly what that means, because I honestly don't remember which version I grew up with myself, but I do want to clarify that this is a publication from 1987 by writer/educator/folklorist, Julius Lester:



And the famous children's book illustrator, Jerry Pinkney:



There's quite a bit of controversy surrounding these stories, and I can't comment on that, but I can tell you that this version is HILARIOUS.

Julius Lester's Voice is spot-on, and I'd like to give you a little taste of it:

When Brer Rabbit wasn't getting in and out of trouble, he was courting. Miz Meadows had a sister, Miz Motts, and she moved down from Philly-Me-York. Brer Rabbit decided to court both of them. Now don't come asking me about Brer Rabbit's family arrangements. How folks arranges their families is their business. Ain't yours and it definitely ain't mine.

Courting back in them days ain't like it is now. Well, wait a minute. Come to think of it, I don't know how it is now, being a married man. But back in my time, you took a girl to a restaurant and spent some money; then you took her to a movie show or something like that and spent some more money. She goes home happy and you go home broke.

And, well, that's basically how the whole book goes.

My daughter and I laughed and laughed and laughed. I particularly liked how Mr. Lester kept insinuating himself into the often nonsensical aspects of the story.

We got our copy from the library, and I honestly can't even believe that this much entertainment was free.

What an excellent start to the Year of the Rabbit.

[Calista · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember as a child being told these stories of Brer Rabbit at a tea party. I loved the stories. I found this book and I was excited to read them. I think they do better when read aloud or told as a story. They are a little 2 dimensional on the page.

Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby is one of the many stories in this collection. I do love that movie and I remember seeing Song of the South in theatres and I loved this short so much. It was good to read, real straight forward. I read this out loud to my niece and nephew and they both thought it was funny too.

Some of the tales form a continuous story, but most of them are just a few pages and done. They are little folktales and teaching lessons. They were too short and I got tired of reading such short stories. It just wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be.

Brer Rabbit is a trickster archetype. He is able to convince people to do anything he wants them to, just like Tom Sawyer, even if it sounds so stupid. He can get out of any fix and he can outwit any of his prey. In several stories he kills Brer fox or Brer Wolf and Brer Bear, sometimes more than one story has him killing them. It was never graphic. I don't know why, I just didn't enjoy this as an adult the way I did as a kid.

I know we are supposed to root for Brer Rabbit, but he seemed rather mean to me and he got into it with everyone. He is a crazy maker and that gets old to me. There is a story with a Turtle and that's the only time I think he lost in these stories. That wasa good one.

From what I gather, these tales are collected back in the 1800s from slaves and these were tales they brought with them. Someone wrote them down and published them.

I'm still glad I read this classic.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not quite the Uncle Remus I remembered, but every bit as enjoyable. Some fun updates for modern times all in a casual manner. If you're unfamiliar with these tales, think Aesop's Fables but a lot more fun. Breir Rabbit is certainly not the best role model which is a large part of the fun. Very well narrated by the author. He's got a great voice for it & I chuckled along. Highly recommended.

[Christie Angleton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I listened to the audio recording of these delightful tales - performed by the author. This was basically a perfect read aloud collection.

[Heather · Rating 5 out of 5]

We borrowed the complete tales from the library and thoroughly enjoyed it. Even a couple years later, my children remembered the stories and wanted me to read them again. Now we have our own copy that I'm going to pull out every February.
It's a wonderful thing and part of our American heritage. Everyone should be as familiar with these stories as with Greek myths and Brothers Grimm.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hesitated for a long time before taking on this book from the 1001 Children's Books You Must Read list. I knew there was great controversy about it. When I did decide to read it (or rather, as I did, listen to the audio of it), I chose a version written by black folklorist and literature professor, Julius Lester, who saw the Uncle Remus stories as important records of black folklore. Lester rewrote the stories in "an effort to elevate the subversive elements over the purportedly racist ones." I was also interested to see that black author Ralph Ellison said about this work, "Aesop and Uncle Remus had taught us that comedy is a disguised form of philosophical instruction; and especially when it allows us to glimpse the animal instincts lying beneath the surface of our civilized affectations."

Julius Lester also read this version of the stories.

[Dayna Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lester has taken the beloved African-American folktales of Joel Chandler Harris and rewritten them slightly. The tales still contain the wonderful tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and company. Lester has merely taken the dialect that was so difficult for most of us in the original and made it a little more understandable for modern readers. While not as good as the original, this little book is a great introduction to the "real thing". Enjoy!

[Debbie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Julies Lester and Jerry Pinkney retell the marvelous tales of Uncle Remus with the same sly sense of humor and with the addition of some modern detalis (references to shopping malls and such). I listened to the audio version, which I highly recommend. It kept me laughing out loud even as I spent the day hauling around boxes of heavy textbooks.

[F.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! The narrator and all the animals talk like deep South African Americans. It's great. The narrator uses lots of great similes. So far the stories (no more than 2 pages long at a time) are little tales of Brer Rabbit outsmarting, tricking, and causing mischief with all the other animals, like Brer Fox, Brer Wolf, etc. He's quite a little menace, but the tales are hilarious and sometimes have little morals at the end. I keep seeing scenes from Splash Mountain in my head, especially when Brer Rabbit pleads, "Please don't throw me in the Briar Patch!"

[Taylor G · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Audiobook narration is extremely well done.

Recommendation- Do some reading about the background about the stories given the controversy around the work.

[Tricia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was technically a kindie read aloud but we’ve all been listening to the audiobook in the car and absolutely loved these stories! Julius Lester reads these stories SO WELL. It made us belly laugh and also made me tear up because his voice reminds me so much of my dad.

[Jennifer Hughes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually this is an audiobook, which is perfect, because I tried reading the original and the dialect was so complicated as to make it unreadable. The reader does a beautiful blend of modernizing the narration with the original dialogue, so you get the feel of the original stories without what we think of as the offensive dialect.

I feel like the Brer Rabbit stories are an important part of our nation's history--besides just good fun--and wanted to share them with my kids. They couldn't get enough of Brer Rabbit's exploits even when I tired of them! What I didn't realize was how much Bugs Bunny is like Brer Rabbit. I'd like to find out more about if BB was modeled on him.

[Dianna Caley · Rating 5 out of 5]

The girls loved this. The author had a wonderful sense of whimsy about the stories and caught just enough of the dialect to make it fun for the girls who loved the idea of a world where good grammar was verboten. Sophie actually made a story stick based on one of the stories and both the girls were sad to come to the end of the book.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most of the way through I was a-laughin' out loud. I actually listened to the audio in my car. Julius Lester does an amazin' job. True, there were some modernizations that were odd and out of place, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Given that it's the edition by Lester and Pinkney, the stories are fine. To be read just a few at a time, though, as the victimized critters are beyond stupid and that gets old. Whatever you do, don't share the Harris or even MWB editions with your kids.

[Douglas Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent.

[Mj · Rating 4 out of 5]

very smart creatures...funny book!

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this on audio, too. A treat to hear these timeless stories in Lester's incredible voice.

[Pat · Rating 4 out of 5]

modern version...

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun book, but it did get a little repetitive.

[Rob Jacobs]

Surprised this is still sold

[Christina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a modern adaptation of the Brer Rabbit Stories popularized by Joel Chandler Harris. Harris Collected these Afro-American folktales from African Americans and published them in the Atlantic Constituition, and later in eight volumes containing 263 tales published 1896 to 1918. To make the tales accessible to white readers, Harris had them told by an African-American man called Uncle Remus to a young white boy. Uncle Remus, in Harris’s words, “has nothing but pleasant memories of the discipline of slavery.” The character soon became a stereotype used to justify slavery, and understandably, the books became highly controversial, which is why they fell out of popularity. It’s also why you won’t find Disney’s Song of the South for sale.
I did a literary tour of Atlanta a number of years ago. There’s a corporately funded, state-of-the-art museum for Margaret Mitchell’s apartment which, if I recall, has burned down twice since she lived there and contained only a handful of items that actually belonged to her. Meanwhile, Harris’s house contains everything he and his family owned and is basically as it was when he lived there. They had had the cash register in the gift shop stolen, twice, and couldn’t afford a security system—there wasn’t much in it anyway. I’m not comparing literary contribution between the authors, or condoning the damage Harris’s work did to African American rights. But he did create, as noted in this book, “the largest single collection of Afro-American folktales ever collected and published.”
The other reason Harris’s work isn’t often read is it’s written in a heavy dialect that is accurate but hard to follow, according to Lester. I plan to try to tackle it to see how the versions compare, but Lester’s goal here was to write these tales in a way that modern readers can enjoy. Uncle Remus and the white boy are gone, and the narrator talks directly to the reader.
The tales themselves, honestly, are a bit redundant. Most follow the same plot as the most famous Tar Baby story. Brer Rabbit gets himself in trouble, usually because he’s asking for it. He then tricks his way out of it, often to the detriment of someone else, whether that person deserves it or not.
Like fairy tales, I don’t think these tales were intended for children. The book is certainly fine for children, but there are some subtle adult themes hidden in the subtext. Brer Bear has two wives. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox are married, but have relationships with other women. They spend a lot of time with Miz Meadows and the girls, who aren’t identified as any particular animal and I suspect are actually prostitutes, though they only ever visit with them on the porch or in the parlor.
Then there’s the violence. At one point Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Fox into getting into a log, traps him inside and burns him alive. He tricks Brer Wolf into a box full of holes, and pours boiling water into the box until Brer Wolf dies. In fact, they both die more than once. It’s probably nothing worse than Wiley Coyote, though.
There’s a whole cast of other characters I wasn’t familiar with. King Deer, Brer Lion, Brer Tiger and Brer Elephant make brief appearances. Brer Turtle is another trickster, and Brer Rabbit’s best friend. Brer Rabbit even has a son, Riley Rabbit, who is featured in a tale. There’s also Mr. Man, who is basically any human man (per the story, animals then couldn’t tell one man from another). Brer Rabbit bests them all.
Though the tales did get a bit monotonous when read back to back, this was still worth reading, and I’m hoping it will help me follow Harris’s version despite the strong dialect.
I also really enjoyed Jerry Pinkney’s beautiful illustrations.

[Scott]

The Tales of Uncle Remus: The Adventures of Brer Rabbit by Julius Lester with illustration by Jerry Pinkney is the retelling of the classic Brer Rabbit adventures. I found the introduction fascinating. It related the history behind the stories, how they evolved, and the impact they had on so many people. I was excited. The only story I actually knew somewhat was Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. The book jacket indicated that the forty-eight stories were timeless. My opinion is that the forty-eight stories have not aged all that well. In fact, they have not aged well at all. There were several times that I cringed while reading a story. I actually cringed. I would never read the actual story to my grandchildren. But I do plan to relate one or two of the stories to them.

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting to compare the stories included in this book to the corresponding ones featured in Disney's Uncle Remus Stories (as well as Song of the South). I was trying to go through and cross-compare the stories myself, but it proved tedious, so for the time, I just decided to enjoy Julius Lester's telling of these folktales. And Lester does a fine job at contributing to the conversation about African American literature, [re]presentation, and identity. His introduction is a must-read because it frames the entire rest of the book! This work is actually causing me to consider pursuing comparative literature as a minor field of study. It's so fascinating to look at and compare the various tellings of these tales! Need to get ahold of an anthology of Joel Chandler Harris's original publications.

[Hannah Shaffer · Rating 1 out of 5]

I only read the first five or six stories to the kids. There are a few things about this book that I wasn’t thrilled with. First, I personally had a difficult time connecting to the characters. Second, since I have such young children I decided against reading a book with improper English because I don’t want bad habits to be formed at a young age. Third, I did not like the constant discontented relationship between Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox.

[Brooke]

I listened to these stories all through my childhood. A favorite quote of my father's is to say "whatever you do, don't throw me in the briar patch!" These stories are full of many life lessons. Children of all ages can enjoy these classic stories.

[Christina Brown Rowley · Rating 2 out of 5]

There were some great funny stories at the beginning, but then there came ones of the animals killing each other that were gruesome. Near the end the stories weren't funny and implied animals cheating on their wives etc. We stopped reading it.

[Laurel Hicks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Julius Lester died this week, and I chose to listen to him read his delightful retelling of Joel Chandler Harris’s retelling of African-American folk stories. Even Tar Baby is here, told in a way that could not offend anyone but Br’er Fox.

[Linda Hanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun stories. The audiobook was very good. I would suggest listening to it in short bursts. With the shortness of stories and the repetitive nature of them, I think it would be more fun to spread it out.

[TransparentFilter · Rating 1 out of 5]

I saw Brer Rabbit at Casa Manana a few years ago but that was the limit to my exposure of this series. I happened to find this book at a nice resale shop and the pictures were beautiful. What an awful book. I didn't even finish it. I can't believe this is a classic.