The One and Only Robin Hood - Hardcover

Gray, Nigel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316325783 ISBN 13: 9780316325783

Publisher: Olympic Marketing Corp, 1987

Synopsis

Robin Hood creates chaos in the palace, lures the king and queen and their soldiers into the forest, and is hailed as a hero by the poor.

About this title

From School Library Journal:

Grade 1-2 Illustrated with comic colored drawings of medieval characters, this story of Robin Hood consists of questions (``Who was in the counting house counting out the money?'') with short answers on the bottom of each page. Familiar rhymes, characters, and situations are all jumbled up and placed together. Maid Marion, for example, becomes a laundry maid who serves the cook who is about to make a blackbird pie for the king. She is rescued from her laundry by Robin Hood, who steals the King's money and the Queen's honey. After Robin dispenses the money to the poor, Little John ``went to bed with his trousers on'' and the ``four and twenty blackbirds'' sing around the captured King and Queen. The illustrations are playful and amusing, but the absence of a clear story line and the strange mixing of puns, rhymes, legendary characters, and even the words from the theme song to the Robin Hood television show make this a confusing storybook. There's not enough good humor in the language or the situations to make the jumble worth sorting out. Yvonne A. Frey, Peoria Public Library, Ill.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Publishers Weekly:

Dressed in green, the ever-fashionable Robin Hood creeps into the king's garden, takes his money, eats the queen's royal bread and honey, lets four and 20 blackbirds loose and runs away with the maid. Following with his soldiers, the king falls into a trap and is turned topsy-turvy from a tree. The same fate befalls the queen. The money is distributed to the poor and an exuberant ring dance follows; Robin is declared a "good fellow" as he is married to the Merry Maid under a big tree by a renegade friar. Gray's retelling of the legend is cast appropriately in the question-and-answer format of medieval ballads sung by troubadours in the English countryside. Craig's Robin is true to the spirit of the prankish and heroic original. This updated version preserves and invigorates the story in rib-tickling pictures that add colorful context to the timeless riddle. Ages 3-8.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Olympic Marketing Corp
• Publication date: 1987
• ISBN 10: 0316325783
• ISBN 13: 9780316325783
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 16
• Illustrator: Craig Helen