American Tall Tales

My son and I are reading this book for a homeschooling study. We have loved the stories and the illustrations. We have had fun going online and comparing them to the some of the stories in the book. Some of the stories are familiar to me and some are ones that are new to me. It has been a fun experience reading them with my son.

I love American tall tales. Unfortunately, they are not often passed down to the youngest generation. It is hard to tell who enjoys a "big fish" story more, the listener or the teller. I have used these stories as an introduction to hyperbole and oral tradition. I ask the question: what makes a story fun to listen to, or fun to tell? These tales are a fantastic way to engage students in both writing and speaking in front of a group. By the end of the unit, everyone has written a story they're dying to tell around our tissue paper campfire.

I ordered this to do a unit study on American tall tales with my 5th grader next school term. I have looked through it and it is really well done, good quality binding with great illustrations. It will be perfect for what I’m needing.

He has interest in reading the history of people so I chose this one because it has a variety of different characters in the whole book and it is one that is good for a 12 year old to get a perspective on the lives of forefathers. I highly recommend this one

I’m a teacher. I purchased this book for my unit on tall tales and folk tales. My students really enjoyed the stories. I also liked how the author gave some biographical insights about each character.

I bought this book for a Creative Writing Assignment I am doing with a class of 5th graders. I read them one of the stories and then asked them to write their own versions, using one of the characters from several of the other stories. These stories, re-imagined by Mary Pope Osborne are written in such a way that keeps any age of reader interested. Accompanied by wonderful wood-etched drawings care of Michael McCurdy, it allows a child, who has very little understanding of the way things worked before planes and cars, to get a feel for our early American times and the way these larger than life characters lived.

It's a classic

The grandkids had not heard these tales. They loved our reading time with the book.

badly written in a very dry and summarized way, not at all like the writer of the Magic Treehouse books. I wonder if it’s possible that there are two different writers with such a name? Total waste of money