Authors and Books
for Children

Talk to the Animals: Thornton W. Burgess Etexts

Conservationist Thornton Burgess used his observations of nature in his many books and stories for children, which are populated with such familiar characters as Peter Rabbit, Reddy Fox, Blacky the Crow, and Jerry Muskrat. Today, the Thornton W. Burgess Society continues his conservation work.

Burgess was born on January 14, 1874, in Sandwich, Massachusetts, where he was brought up by his mother; his father died when he was only nine months old. Eventually working his way up from janitor and office boy to associate editor of Good Housekeeping, he began making up bedtime stories about animals to tell his young son (Burgess's wife had died soon after their son's birth); eventually he wrote some fifteen thousand such stories and published some seventy books.


Always interested in the environment and conservation, Burgess used his stories both to entertain children and to promote moral behavior and a better understanding of nature.

Burgess died of lung cancer in Hampden, Massachusetts, on June 5, 1965, at the age of ninety-one.

The Thornton W. Burgess Society, a nonprofit educational organization established in 1976, operates the Thornton W. Burgess Museum in Sandwich, Massachusetts, and the Green Briar Nature Center and Jam Kitchen in East Sandwich, "to inspire reverence for wildlife and concern for the natural environment."

Burgess Books
Old Mother West Wind, 1910
A Great Joke on Jimmy Skunk, 1912
The Adventures of Johnny Chuck, 1913
The Adventures of Reddy Fox, 1913
The Adventures of Jerry Muskrat, 1914
The Adventures of Mr. Mocker, 1914
Grandfather Frog Stays in the Smiling Pool, 1914
"Peter Rabbit Fools Jimmy Skunk" (short story from The Adventures of Peter Cottontail), 1914
The Adventures of Paddy the Beaver , 1917
The Adventures of Poor Mrs. Quack, 1917
The Burgess Bird Book for Children, 1919
Mrs. Peter Rabbit, 1919
The Burgess Animal Book for Children, 1920
Old Granny Fox, 1920
The Advenutes of Old Mr. Toad, 1920
Lightfoot the Deer, 1921
Blacky the Crow, 1922
Whitefoot the Wood Mouse, 1922