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Children who spend their leisure hours watching television or playing video games will never know the thrill of hearing the Lone Ranger shout “Hi-o, Silver!” or know about Calamity Jane and her sharpshooting. The stories of the American West, with its cowboys, outlaws and Indians, have long been sequestered in the pages of storybooks like this one.
Editor Cooper Edens owns one of the largest collections of vintage picture books in the world. In his compilations of these Wild West stories and poems, as in his book Sea Stories, he has illustrated the pages with classic museum-quality pictures that many adults will recall but that will be new to this generation.
There are more than seventy entries of stories, poems, and songs included here. Characters such as Pecos Bill, Sweet Betsy from Pike and Old Dan Tucker make their way to the pages. The reader will also see the words of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Walt Whitman and John Lennon with Paul McCartney. Perhaps after reading several of these entries, readers will want to seek out some old reruns of The Lone Ranger or a John Wayne movie.
This is a labor of love for the editor and a collection well worth sharing. Adults will need to aid younger readers in finding this compilation of Classic Western Stories, as the short story collection is often a lost section of the library.
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Classic Western Stories: The Most Beloved Stories