Rating: 
Summary: i love it i would read it again
Review: it is so cool i would let my parents do anything to me to get me that book. i would recommend it to everyone in the world. i love the book -i don't care if people think im crazy over it. it is so cool & i have seen both of the moives.
Rating:
Summary: Two Revolutionary War Stories
Review: It will be remembered that The Headless Horseman was a Hessian. The figures seen by Rip Van Winkle playing at ninepins are ghosts of Hudson and his crew.Irving's pen could sketch a joke as fast as anyone's, and as deftly---the profundity of his writing is as much in his sorely-tried and perfectly-rendered landscapes as in the bore of his cannon mind. It is not for nothing he is placed by Twain and Alcott on the children's shelf. The tale of the schoolman affrighted by a ghost, and the one about the henpecked idler who wakes up an American perhaps escape some readers, and his prose is a model.
Rating:
Summary: THE FIRST HALLOWEEN?
Review: Like Rip Van Winkle, this tale is set in Dutch New York State in a real place called Tarry Town. The colonists farm and gossip, play tricks, have ambitions and court young ladies--in an area steeped in macabre superstition. Ichabod crane, a lanky and susceptible schoolmaster from Connecticut, vies with local hothead, Brom Bones, for the affection (and lush estates) of desirable Katrina Van Tassel. But the sleepy region's ghostly lore and grisly legends are used for more than mere fireside entertainment. Will we ever know the truth of the shattered pumpkin by the bridge? Each one must fill in the fate of the ambitious pedagogue as seems best, for Washington Irving leaves it to the reader to decide. Once the US ambassador to Spain, Irving traveled widely and collected the folklore of the countries he visited nearly 150 years ago. "Yet his characters are as fresh and vital today as when they first appeared in print." One edition of his stories includes: Rip Van Wwinkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, plus two lesser-known works: The Spectre Bridegroom (set in Germany) and The Moor's Legacy (set in Spain's Alhambra). Few authors can match his rich vocabulary and detailed narrative. Our American literary and folkloric heritage are indebted to Irving's style and imagination. What were Halloween without the Headless Horseman hounding poor Ichabod Crane through the spooky woods?
Rating: 
Summary: Heads Will Roll!
Review: Sleepy Hollow. The name sends chills down my spine. I never really had an interest in the legend until the new movie. Now I love it. I read this book in the early hours of Thanksgiving morning. Loved it! It's short, descriptive, and exciting all at once. Advice for those who do read it: don't do it late at night like me. You won't be able to sleep!
Rating:
Summary: The Legend of Sleepy Hallow
Review: The Legend of Sleepy Hallow by Washington Irving was high quality reading. Washington bridged the gap from the Puritan era to today. By descriptive scenes and common characters Washington lulls you into the story. The Legend of Sleepy Hallow was unlike the full-length feature film "Sleep Hallow". Though the two have the same characters the plots differ. The book has Ichabod Crane (the protagonist character) as a dumpy school teacher who is content to teach school, give singing lessons, and read books on bewitching tales, where as the movie has Ichabod Crane as a pharisaic pathologist. I liked how the book was unlike the movie; I didn't know what was going to happen next. Also the book is relatively short, making it easy to breeze through the book in no time. If you need to read a novel from an American writer then this would be the book for you.
Rating:
Summary: Irving's classic story of a community's haunting
Review: The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow is a classic haunting story has been redone in picturebook format to appeal to a younger audience here. Excellent reading skills will still be required of grades 3-5, who will find the full-page color drawings an added plus to absorbing Irving's classic story of a community's haunting.
Rating:
Summary: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
Review: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow is a scary tall tale told in the quiet town of Sleepy Hollow. It all starts out when Ichabod Crane(an intelligent school teacher) goes to a party at the Van Tassel's house. At the party a mean guy named Brom Bones tells a scary tale, about a headless horseman from the Revolutionary War. It was told that he roamed the night looking for his head, which he lost in battle. That night Ichabod had to ride home, he was very frightened. Lets just say Ichabod was never seen again, the only thing found the next day was his hat.
The legend of Sleepy Hollow is a great thriller. You can tell the tale at night, when you have a sleepover, or around a campfire. The book has a good story line and can be easily followed. I hope you don't get too scared when you read about the Headless Horseman...
Rating:
Summary: Sleepy Hollow
Review: The legend of Sleepy Hollow written by Washington Irving is a great story to read and tell. Irving's precise descriptions of the setting and the characters paint pictures in your mind. It is very easy to see what is happening. The story is about a schoolmaster, Ichabod Crane, who has a run-in with the towns talked about gohst, the Headless Horseman. This book is funny and would be great to tell to kids around a campfire in the middle of the woods.
Rating:
Summary: Where The Pocantico Winds Its Wizard Stream
Review: The original 1928 Arthur Rackham edition of Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (first published in 1819) was one of the most beautifully illustrated versions of the tale ever produced. This Books Of Wonder facsimile of that edition is certainly the finest available today, though folk artist Will Moses' bright retelling runs a close second. Rackham's watercolors for this American classic are very much in keeping with his earlier work, which had established him as the greatest British illustrator of his era. Where much of Irving's tale is painted in the warm autumn hues, Rackham choose to portray Sleep Hollow as not only a place of overwhelming haunts and visions, but as a region existing in a state of permanent, moody twilight. His Sleep Hollow seems perpetually in crepuscular shadow: the last pure rays of the sun have just vanished from the earth, and darkness, though it has not fallen yet, is falling quickly. In the artist's eye, Irving's fireside tale appears to take place not in glorious mid-October, but in storm-swept late November. The illustrator's anthropomorphic and archetypal Sleepy Hollow also magnifies elements of Irving's romantic landscape over and above the necessities of the text. While witches, ghosts, and visions are discussed in the story, Rackham depicts the trees, houses, and countryside of the region as teeming with every kind of fairy, goblin, dryad, and witch, as if calmly revealing to the eyes of man the always coexistent if invisible supernatural life of the Hudson River Valley. His painting of Major Andre's Tree, for example, depicts a traditional European fairytale witch and her black cat familiar walking along the road beneath Andre's tree as if they had every right to be there. It is mankind that is the anxious, insecure, and mortally temporary interloper into this vaster mystical world. Rackham's trees are trees but also fairies, his fairies are fairies but also witches, his witches are human in form but also trees, and the birds resting in the trees, while birds, are sometimes partially fairies. All of these creatures confidently, humorously, and mischievously observe mankind, which, when not perpetually scurrying home to safety, gathers together in nervous groups to share tidings, portents, and spook tales. Irving's remarkably poetic and nuanced prose is in every way worthy of the man who bears the honor of being America's first great writer. Interestingly, the tale is partially a study in contrasts: schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his rival, the rabble - rousing Brom Bones, though obvious opposites, each also contain elements of the other. Ichabod, though he lives largely in his thoughts and dreams, has a very definite physical side: he plays boisterously outdoors with the town children, and, at the fatal party at the story's end, commands the dance floor in a way that delights and astonishes the other guests. And Brom, who is a great horseman and a fearless fighter, is also known throughout the region for his cleverness in shrewdly achieving his own ends. Ichabod is an ugly, eccentric "scarecrow" of a man, while Brom is "broad - shouldered and double - jointed," with a "Herculean frame and great powers of limb." Brom, unlike the ultimately solitary Ichabod, is a well - established alpha male with "three or four boon companions who regard him as their model," and who comprise his "gang." On the other hand, Ichabod, when not surrounded by his boy students, spends his time gossiping and sharing ghost stories around midnight fires with elderly Dutch women. Ichabod and Brom both court the lovely Katrina Van Tassel in their own fashion, not only because she is a model of feminine beauty and charm, but because each covets her family's wealth and bountiful farmland. It's no accident that the "dominant" specter of Sleepy Hollow, who is "commander - in - chief of all the powers of the air," is a headless horseman, while Ichabod is a respected teacher and storyteller, a "man of letters" and a "pedagogue." The fearsome, massively - built Headless Horseman, who may or may not be Brom in disguise, is all torso and limbs, while Ichabod is one of the few, if not the only, inhabitant of the hollow who earns his living by his intellect - by his head. Thus they make symbolically perfect, if unequal, opponents. With his real or illusory ties to the supernatural, the headless horseman, who is believed to ride the wind and to appear and disappear in bursts of fire, is a malevolent force of nature. If of supernatural origin, then he does indeed command "the nightmare, with her whole ninefold," and all the other spirits of the air; but if merely human, then he still commands Brom's raw, "Herculean" power, and is physically far more than a match for Ichabod. Clearly, Irving was making a statement of sorts. Brom's earthy cleverness and steely masculinity triumph in the end, while Ichabod's misapplied intelligence, more often than not, leads him towards, and not away from, superstition, anxiety, and hysteria - ridden imagining. Brom's quiet confidence in his prowess is genuine, but the talkative Ichabod's confidence is only a smug self - deception out of which his boastfulness and foolish behavior are born. This edition is a happy marriage of two masters of their form, and contains the unabridged text. Travelers may be particularly interested in the Rackham watercolor captioned "Reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones," which portrays Ichabod and three Dutch maidens standing in the Old Dutch Churchyard on an overcast afternoon. The illustration is remarkable, because, 75 years after it was completed, those visiting the churchyard today, which is now a national landmark, can stand in exactly the same spot and see how incredibly accurate the artist's representation of the burial ground was, and how little the beautiful site has changed, in mood and detail, over the years. As Irving wrote, "Time, which changes all things, is slow in its operations on a Dutchman's dwelling." And thereabouts.
Rating:
Summary: before we knew what it meant to be an American
Review: The Stories of Washington Irving are from a time before America had its national identity figured out. Just as recent times have shown what it means to be American--the terrible cost and awesome responsibilities of freedom, Irving's tales showcase the characters who were exploring the uncharted waters of their new found freedom. I never liked Irving when I read him in school. This can probably be explained by the fact that I have always had a homework allergy. However, I have recently reacquainted myself to the man's writings. I am surprised how much I now enjoy them. It has been a joy to step back in time with Irving. His characters affirm my belief that no matter what age people live in, they are still able to speak to the present. The aspect of Irving's writing that appeals to me most is his humor. It is exemplified by his two most famous tales: "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," but it is present throughout the work. We humans, much like Dame Van Winkle, tend to be too serious. Irving was an astute chronicler of the people he saw around him--all the while looking at life through smiling eyes--and it is most refreshing to share his view for a while. I recommend this book.
|
