Swamp Angel

Born on August 1, 1815, the great Tennessee woodswoman Angelica Longrider was--at birth--"scarcely taller than her mother and could not climb a tree without help." Although she would be a "full two years old before she built her first log cabin," Angelica would win favor with the locals with her "eye-poppin" wondrous feats, including--at age 12--a dramatic rescue of a bogged-down wagon train ("she lifted those wagons like they were twigs in a puddle"), earning her the sobriquet of Swamp Angel. Beautifully written by Anne Isaacs and gorgeously illustrated by Paul O. Zelinsky, this iconographic animated adaptation of the 1994 Caldecott Honor book, winsomely narrated by Allison Moorer, is a stellar addition to the tall tale tradition. In Paul Bunyan-esque fashion, Swamp Angel Angela enters a competition to rid the countryside of a root cellar-clearing bear named Thunderin' Tarnation (when one of the men jibe, "shouldn't you be home makin' a quilt?", Angelica retorts "quiltin' is men's work"), and quickly clears the field of contenders. In the ensuing larger-than-life fight, Swamp Angel and Thunderin' Tarnation wrassle around the countryside, underwater (at one point, the bear has Angelica pinned at the bottom of a lake and she's forced "to drink the lake dry to get a breath"), and up in the sky. Normally, I would not reveal the final outcome, except in this case Isaacs boldly follows the tale to its logical conclusion with the demise of Thunderin' Tarnation, thereby breaking the unspoken modern children's story rule of killing off a named character. Trust me, it's done with style and wit, with a clever coda (that I won't reveal). Highly recommended. Aud: K, E, P. (R. Pitman)