Buy on Amazon
View on Biblioguides
Many countries, older than the United States, have their folk tales and fairy tales and mythologies. These are a source of the many stories that we love so much – Cinderella, Hercules, plowboys who win princesses through their bravery and cleverness, Jack the Giant Killer, and many more. England has the King Arthur legends, France has Roland the great knightly hero, and Spain has El Cid, who was possibly historical and helped take Spain back from the Muslim invaders, and of course Don Quixote, who was a legend in his own mind. Scandinavia has Siegfried and dwarves and elves and the little guardians called tomtes – but who does our younger country of America have that is anything like the above? We have Paul Bunyan, a hero in our American mythology. Paul Bunyan was a giant lumberjack, whose strength and skill with an axe and giant blue ox, Babe, helped clear the primeval forests across our land to make room for western expansion. Paul Bunyan and His Great Blue Ox, by Wallace Wadsworth, collects and re-tells these tongue-in-cheek tales, traditionally told around the campfire in lonely logging camps. While the folk tales of other countries have a mix of drama and tragedy with a little humor mixed in here and there, the tales of Paul Bunyan are almost entirely in the category of “tall tales,” stories that are exaggerated and almost always humorous. Of course, one could say that any story about a giant lumberjack is a “tall tale!” I think it is still part of cultural literacy for middle school children to know about Paul Bunyan, the great American folk hero, and this book is a great introduction to his legend.