Brer Rabbit Again!

Brer Rabbit Again! (Brer Rabbit’s Adventures). London: Award Publications Limited. ISBN 0-86163-691-0 / 9780861636914. Copyright 1987 by Award Publications Limited. This edition first published 1993. This copy is the third impression, 1999. Published by Award Publications Limited, 27 Longford Street, London NW1 3DZ. Printed in Singapore. Laminated pictorial hardcover, no dust jacket as issued. Approximately 17.5 × 23.5 cm. About 24 pages, richly illustrated throughout, with pictorial endpapers. Condition: very good. Clean, bright teal boards with gilt title to upper cover and inset colour illustration. No creasing, rubbing of note, fading or bumps. Spine tight and square. Internals unmarked: no names, inscriptions or writing in the “This book belongs to” panel. Pages clean and bright. Looks unread. A sharp copy of this later Award impression. Contents A short colour picture-book of Brer Rabbit tales in the Award “Brer Rabbit’s Adventures” format. Stories in this copy include: • Brer Terrapin Shows His Strength • Brer Rabbit Goes Shopping • Brer Rabbit Meets His Match (Brer Buzzard) • Brer Rabbit and Brer Lion The text is a simplified children’s retelling of Uncle Remus / Brer Rabbit folklore. Trade listings commonly credit Joel Chandler Harris as source author, with Enid Blyton as reteller on many Award/Blyton-associated Brer Rabbit editions of this period. The title page of this impression names the illustrator prominently: Illustrated by Rene Cloke. About the source author — Joel Chandler Harris (1848–1908) Harris was an American journalist and folklorist from Georgia. From the late 1870s he published the Uncle Remus stories, which collected and popularised African American trickster tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, Brer Wolf and Brer Terrapin. Those stories became one of the most widely reprinted animal-fable cycles in English children’s publishing. Twentieth-century British editions, including Award’s Cloke-illustrated picture books, adapted the tales into short, brightly illustrated episodes for young readers. About Enid Blyton (1897–1968) Blyton retold Brer Rabbit stories for British children from the 1930s onward (including titles such as Brer Rabbit Book and Brer Rabbit Again for Dean and other houses). Award’s 1980s–1990s picture-book line often draws on that British retelling tradition even when Harris is the named source. Blyton’s versions are written in clear, spoken English for younger children rather than in Harris’s original dialect. About the illustrator — Rene Cloke (1904–1995) Rene Mable Neighbour Cloke (also given as Irene Mabel Neighbour Cloke) was born in Plymouth on 4 or 8 October 1904 and died in London on 1 October 1995. Largely self-taught, she began illustrating in the 1920s for W. & R. Chambers (including The Radiant Way) and worked for seven decades as a children’s book artist and greetings-card designer. During the Second World War she worked as a tracer producing maps from photographs for the RAF. Her style is instantly recognisable: warm watercolour, dressed woodland animals, English countryside flora, and a gentle comic sense. She illustrated Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Grimm and Andersen, Bible storybooks, many Enid Blyton titles, and a substantial Award Publications Brer Rabbit sequence from the early 1980s (Brer Rabbit Stories, More Brer Rabbit Stories, My Big Book of Brer Rabbit Stories, Brer Rabbit Again, colour and puzzle books, and later collected editions). This 1993/1999 Award hardcover belongs to that series: full-page and spot colour plates, decorative endpapers, and the characteristic Cloke animals in jackets, waistcoats and hats.…