Traces the history and gives examples of puns, shaggy-dog stories, and other jokes from American humor of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Witcracks
Americas
Materials from the Americas
Tucker Pfeffercorn
A retelling of the classic Rumpelstiltskin tale with a Southern setting.
Rip Van Winkle’s Return
Rip Van Winkle is an idler who would rather starve for a penny than work for a pound, and his wife is constantly nagging him. In search of peace, Rip heads off to the woods one day with his faithful dog, Wolf. High up in the Catskill Mountains, Rip meets an unusual group of little men. He drinks their strong beverage and falls into a deep sleep. When he awakens, he finds that twenty years have passed – the world has changed and so has he. With vibrant paintings by Leonard Everett Fisher, Eric A. Kimmel’s adaptation of Washington Irving’s classic “Rip Van Winkle” introduces a Rip who reforms as a result of his experience.
Many Thousand Gone: African Americans from Slavery to Freedom
Recounts the journey of Black slaves to freedom via the underground railroad, an extended group of people who helped fugitive slaves in many ways.
Alice Nizzy Nazzy: The Witch Of Santa Fe
When Manuela’s sheep are stolen, she has to go to Alice Nizzy Nazzy’s talking road-runner-footed adobe house and try to get the witch to give the flock back, in a Southwestern version of the Baba Yaga story.
The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow
A superstitious schoolmaster, in love with a wealthy farmer’s daughter, has a terrifying encounter with a headless horseman.
Wee Winnie Witch’s Skinny
James Lee and Uncle Big Anthony become victims of Wee Winnie Witch, who takes them on a ride up into the sky, but Mama Granny saves them.
Red Rider’s Hood
After learning that there are werewolves in his city, a sixteen-year-old is even more surprised to discover the identities of the hunters who drove them out decades earlier, but he soon infiltrates the Wolves gang to help destroy them for good.
Old Dry Frye
A humorous retelling of an Appalachian folktale about a preacher who chokes on a chicken bone.
American Fairy Tales: From Rip Van Winkle To The Rootabaga Stories
Includes works and discussion of Washington Irving, Horace E. Scudder, M.S.B., Frank Stockton, Howard Pyle, Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Laura E. Richards, Ruth Plumly Thompson, Will Bradley, Carl Sandburg, and Neil Philip.