The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle - Softcover

Irving, Washington

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080950250X ISBN 13: 9780809502509

Publisher: WLC, 2009

Synopsis

"The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" is set circa 1790 in the Dutch settlement of Tarry Town, New York, in a secluded glen called Sleepy Hollow. It tells the story of Ichabod Crane, a lean, lanky, and extremely superstitious schoolmaster from Connecticut, who competes with Abraham "Brom Bones" Van Brunt, the town rowdy, for the hand of 18-year-old Katrina Van Tassel, the daughter and sole child of a wealthy farmer. As Crane leaves a party, he is pursued by the Headless Horseman, who is supposedly the ghost of a Hessian trooper who had his head shot off by a stray cannonball during "some nameless battle" of the American Revolutionary War, and who "rides forth to the scene of battle in nightly quest of his head."

About this title

About the Author

Alice Hoffman is the author of fourteen novels, including Practical Magic, Turtle Moon, Local Girls, Here on Earth, The River King, and Blue Diary. She lives in Massachusetts.

Review

Abridged but not rewritten, the classic tale is decorated with a plethora of very small, comically gothic cartoons that add an air of spooky grotesquerie. An overall color scheme of pale browns and oranges adds a properly autumnal air to Sleepy Hollow's knobby woodlands, and the supporting cast includes nearly as many ghosts, toothy imps and the like as it does human figures. Grimly's not much for verisimilitude - party guests at the Van Tassels include African-Americans, and there's a glimpse of a generic Native American earlier on - but burly "rantipole hero" Brom Bones looks rightly massive next to the exaggeratedly gawky figure of Ichabod Crane. The Headless Horseman not only sports a particularly eerie-looking twig between its shoulders but rides a red-eyed, demonic steed, and in three views on the final page the decayed schoolhouse has a decidedly haunted air. Still, this is not a particularly scary rendition, and because its text is chopped into scattered, easily digestible passages tucked between or inside the panels, it may have more appeal to less-able readers than full versions. (Fantasy. 10-12) (Kirkus Reviews) --Kirkus Reviews

Edition details

• Publisher: WLC
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080950250X
• ISBN 13: 9780809502509
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 86