Robin Hood Books

This book tells the story of Robin Hood, using the story of Sir Richard of the Lee, as it's central focus. Along the way, most of the old ballads of Robin Hood are (more or less) faithfully retold, along with a few other ballads (e.g Clym of Clough et al.) which are not really part of the Robin Hood legend, but either influenced it or were influenced by it. The book is well researched, with most of the stories taking place in Barnesleydale, rather than Nottingham (Sherwood forest covered a much larger area in the middle ages than it does now, and most of the ballads are set in Barnsleydale). The author does not shy away from the mythical/folklore elements of the stories, and portrays Robin as a subversive, working class hero, rather than the usual boring aristocrat (Kevin Costner take note!). I was a little bit disappointed that the ballad of Robin and Guy of Gisbourne received only a few lines at the end (I think it's the best ballad of all). Overall, the ballads are cleverly twined, and linked by the author's own prose into a single, coherent story.

I recently bought several kid-oriented versions of the tale of Robin Hood, looking for one that would be right for my 2nd grader. I haven't found one that's right for him to read yet, but this version is excellent for me to read to him. The first one edition I read was the Bullseye "Step into Classics" edition, and this edition is the second children's edition I've read.

The chapters are short (as is the whole book), but the author takes the time to include the elements of feasting and fighting that mark the older, more adult versions of the tale. The language is more complex than the Bullseye edition, but not by too much, and the language has a bit more of the "Olde England" feel I'm used to without going so far as to use archaic words. There's no smiting of pates here, I'm afraid. I'm torn between missing the archaic style and being glad I don't have to explain every other word to my son.

Robin Hood comes off as having a nasty temper, which I suppose he always did, but other versions usually have a bit more build-up before he goes wild. In order to keep the pace fast, the author omits some of the process of Robin getting mad, so he often seems a bit mean.

This book does a bit better than the Bullseye edition as far as telling how the men joined the band, giving better detail on the origin of Robin Hood himself and how Friar Tuck joined the band. It also tells the story of Alan a' Dale with more detail, and gives much better background on Maid Marian and her father. The other members of the band are explained as having been there from the beginning (in this story, an existing band saves Robin from the Sheriff, and Robin comes to lead them.)

The biggest weakness in this edition is that Prince John is virtually absent from the story, and King Richard never comes back to pardon everyone. There are several bits where the sherrif goes to see "the king," and the king he talks to seems a decent sort of fellow. Without a properly evil ruler, it's harder to understand why the people love Robin Hood so much.

Overall, I'd say this edition is a good compromise between being comprehensive and remaining accessible to children. I'd estimate it's at about a 3rd-4th grade reading level, but should be fine for reading to children as young as 6.

This is a nice little retelling of the `Robin and Little John' story for those interested in introducing the classics to small fry in the [...] year old range. [Not a primer.]

The book begins with a little background about Robin and his men. The author tells us that the Merry Men ate the King's deer and robbed the rich, giving the results to the poor.

She also tells us that Robin was considered a criminal and that the sheriff was on the hunt for him in order to bring him to the gallows. (BTW -- If your six year old is anything like mine the concept of the 'hero' being a 'criminal' won't be a concept that is easily understood.)

The main drift however is that Robin was out on his own one day looking for adventure when he runs across John Little -- an extremely large fellow. The two immediately decide to contest who should be allowed to cross a stream via a log bridge.

After fighting for quite some time John finally unseats Robin who lands in the water with a hearty splash. Robin proves to be a good sport and doesn't take it personally. He calls his men though and they take the episode more seriously and proceed to gang up on John Little. Robin calls them off and he and John then have an archery contest. John gets a bull's eye but Robin out-shoots him and splits John's arrow down the middle. Convinced that Robin is worth following, John joins the Merry Men and he and Robin turn out to be the best of friends.

Four Stars. Classic story. Artwork is large, colorful, and nice. There is no archaic language to confuse small fry, and not much in the way of violence (Robin and John whack each other with sticks).

What might confuse younger children is the idea that Robin is a criminal and yet the hero of the story, so be prepared to explain the semi-historical setting (King Richard, King John, the Sheriff etc. ).

Robin Hood in Popular Culture is the proceedings volume of the 1997 Robin Hood academic conference. The papers collected cover the whole range of the legend from the earliest ballads to American legal cases to films to superhero comic books to 1927 Marxist Japanese plays. A great many of the papers are well-written. Unfortunately some are written in "literary speak". But all the articles are informative. This isn't a book for beginner's. Barrie Dobson and Stephen Knight's plenary addresses are helpful for getting a sense of the beginnings of the legend, and where the legend is headed. But for those unfamiliar with the basics of Robin Hood scholarship, I'd recommend Dobson, Knight or J.C. Holt's books on Robin Hood. However, if you are familiar with the basics of the legend, this book is a treasure trove of interesting information about rarely explored nooks and crannies of the outlaw tales.

Book # 1 of this series is Rowan Hood, about Rowan and her ancillary band to Robin's in the Sherwood Forest. Book # 2 is Lionclaw. Book # 3 is this one about Princess Ettard, a 13 year old who is rescued by Rowan and friends from a marraige to a wealthy landowner. In this, there is more backstory to Etty, we find out more about her parents and why her father is the tyrant king he is. I haven't read Lionclaw, the book about Lionel, yet, but I don't *think* this novel would stand well on its own.

I gave this book three stars because it had too much detail in some parts and that made it long and boring. In other parts it wasn't long enough. Some parts gave me a headache and made me not want to continue. I do not recommend this book

I give this book 2 stars. it started with a princess who wanted to be in an outlaw group. but the king is tring to stop her. overall th book was.......BAD! I wish there was more fighting in it. I think the book should have been more interesting. I would not recommend this book to other people. I hope I helped your with your decision.

(do not read it was horrible)(get a life)

The Outlaw Princess Of Sherwood was a great book. There were some parts that were awesome. It really reeled the reader in, but some parts were kind of boring.I would give it a 3 on a scale of 1-5. If you like adventurous books or if you like books with a lot of action, then this is the book for you. It was exciting and fun to read. I didn't know what was going to happen next.

I thought that the book was good and everything but I really did'nt get it.I would recommend the book to people and friends.The book was a little messed up at the beginning but I finished the book. I think the book had alot of description of the characters.
I gave the book 3 stars becouse the book was o.k. and everything but the book was not that intresting and I didn't like when the princess was going to kill her father and she liked the mother better then her father.

This was a huge hit with both our 2 year old and 4 year old. The illustrations work like a comic book, so non-readers can figure out most of the story. Every 2 pages is a single "chapter" with blocks of text under each frame (about 12 frames per page) with narrative and dialogue in the frames themselves. The narrative was perfect for our 2 year old to hear, and our 4 year old enjoyed the dialogue, which was mostly simple humor about the story or frame. It's by far the most accessible Robin Hood we've found, giving the entire Robin Hood story arc rather than just Robin meets Marian, or Robin meets Little John. Candlewick is an excellent publisher and the paperback is pretty sturdy (although we have read ours to pieces, and so I'm looking for a replacement!)

We were searching for a simple Robin Hood adventure story to introduce our children (ages 5,6, and 9) to the whole Robin Hood legend. We ordered this based on the rave reviews we read. What we received, however, was very disappointing -- v-e-r-y tiny text, written on absolutely horrible cartoon drawings. The stories were unintelligible without a magnifying glass and an appreciation for the author's rather lame attempts at humor. This was not the book we were expecting, especially for kids who were unfamiliar with the story and the characters. The pictures were just plain ugly, the text too small, and the storytelling abominable. Not a fun family read!

This book is absolutely fabulous! I was very interested in learning more about the famous tales of Robin Hood, but all the books about him were very advanced and I didn't understand many of the phrases. When I found this book, I read it and I was so pleased beause it is exactly what I wanted to find:tales about the adventures of Robin Hood and I was too happy to describe that I could understand every word! If you want to read about Robin Hood but cannot yet understand the advanced vocabulary of the writers from long ago, then this is the book for you!

While the story is fun and exciting, the sentence structure in the book is very disappointing. I recognize that it may be the author's style to add emphasis to ideas by writing them as stand-alone sentences, even if they are fragments. However, the children who are reading this book are usually also just learning how to write a good sentence; so the basic rule that a sentence should be a complete thought is more important in books for early readers than in books written for older audiences.
I was also frustrated because it would have been so easy for the author to write her thoughts in complete sentences. Many fragments could easily have been written as the second half of a compound sentence.
Some examples from page 6:
"The lad agreed. And he beat the man. Fair and square."
"But the man was angry. And embarrassed."
"Like most outlaws, he stole. But only from the rich."

I bought this book to read with my 7 year old, and I am pretty well pleased with it. The vocabulary is simple, the sentences are short (and often start with the word "and"; my grade school teachers would be appalled), but the tale is told effectively and accessibly for young readers.

Also, unlike some other books for young readers (e.g. the Droon series), this book does not simplify to the point of eliminating all of the descriptive passages. When Robin disguises himself as a musician, he wears "feathers of many colors" and carries a harp. There's not enough description to interfere with the pace for impatient children, but there is enough detail to hang your imagination off of.

As for the story, there were some frustrating omissions. The origin of Robin Hood is given only a few paragraphs in the introduction, and the tales of how Will Scarlet and Friar Tuck joined the band are missing. The book only tells how Little John joined. The rest just sort of show up later in the story. I'm sure that was done to keep the pace of the story moving, but it would have been good to have more of the stories written in this same style.

The rest of the story is a reasonably solid narration of the traditional tale of Robin Hood, with no more than the usual level of variation. I definitely recommend this book as a good way to introduce children to the story of Robin Hood, though I like the Dover Children's Thrift Classics edition slightly better.

I am 6 years old in first grade and I love this book! I like the characters best. It's great. The words were not hard for me. I've got 20,000 Leagues under the sea, the last of the Mohicans, Robin Hood, and Kidnapped, and Robin Hood is one of the best of these.

Okay, this book isn't for people beginning to study the Robin Hood legend. For that, I'd recommend Stephen Knight's Robin Hood: A Complete Study, J.C. Holt's Robin Hood and R.B. Dobson and J. Taylor's Rymes of Robin Hood.

But for those of you somewhat familiar with the history and development of the outlaw legend, this book makes great reading. It collects a variety of articles and chapters from over two centuries of Robin Hood scholarship. Detailed discussions on the earliest ballads, historical outlaws, mythic themes, Renaissance plays, and modern movies (in particular, Flynn's Adventures of Robin Hood and Men in Tights).

Many of these articles are classics in the field of Robin Hood scholarship. For example, Joseph Hunter's 19th century examination of a real-life man named Robin Hood from the court of Edward II. Or the 1950s-1960s debate between Rodney Hilton and J.C. Holt on the audiences of the early ballads. Their debate triggered much of the modern academic writing on Robin Hood.

If you've heard of (but never read) those articles before, then this book is definitely for you.

The strength of this volume is that it is a good compilation of essays that focus in on scholarship on Robin Hood. There are treatments of Robin Hood in relation to literary criticism, history, media, and a range of topics. I found the section on history to be the most interesting. Some of the essays provide model studies for investigating intriguing issues that relate to the development of ballads and stories about Robin Hood, and there is a great deal of scholarship for investigating historical kernels associated with the stories. The section on media includes a few strong essays -- I enjoyed the treatment of Robin Hood on screen from the earliest movies into contemporary cartoons and even satires. But some of the essays and in fact entire sections are really weak. I thought that by far the least interesting (and the poorest written) essays were in the area that focused on literary criticism. This facet of scholarship surprised me because I thought that literary critics would know how to write due to the nature of their study.

Most treatments of Robin Hood are light, semi-fantasy coverages for younger ages, so it's important to note that THE ROBIN HOOD HANDBOOK: THE OUTLAW IN HISTORY, MYTH AND LEGEND is far different, covering not only many true-life biographical details, but rounding out biography with a social and political history of his times. Original research by a long-time mythology researcher enhances the story of Robin Hood, reconstructed from myths, films, folklore, place-names, ballads and more.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This book is VERY disappointing, and the previous review suggests that it has misled at least one reader. It is impossible to provide "true-life biographical details" for Robin Hood. The best medieval historians have failed to identify a truly convincing prototype for the character, and those prototypes that HAVE been identified exist only as names in court rolls, with no biographies to go with them. Dixon-Kennedy's work has its moments, but it is marred by a tendency to accept anything that has been written by anyone as a true fact about Robin Hood. Particularly egregious is his lengthy "reconstruction" of the "complete" legend, in which he claims to have relied mainly on early ballads and plays of Robin Hood. In fact, he has relied mainly on children's books of the early 20th century, and has thus incorporated characters and events that are not a part of the early or middle-period legends. Many of these characters exist only in a single book, and are clearly the inventions of modern authors. Thus, he may appear to be giving "true-life biographical details," but he is in fact recounting modern, fictional accounts as though they were part of medieval history. Similarly, he has identified characters such as the Sheriff of Nottingham by name, using works of fiction as his sources. It's rather like using Philippa Gregory's novels as the sources for a "Handbook" of Henry VIII.

It all adds up to a very misleading and disappointing "handbook" that will be of very little use to anyone.

Having achieved great success with his humorous bridge fiction involving the monks of St Titus, David Bird sought to move his bridge tales out into other areas. One of the first was to move the game back several centuries and have the game played by the outlaw Robin Hood in Sherwood Forest near Nottingham.

As with the "Abbot" series, each chapter in the book puts the protagonists into a situation that allows them to play bridge and provides a backdrop for the humour that is what makes up such a large part of the appeal of this genre. Each hand is presented as a play problem and there is an opportunity for the reader to try to tackle it as a double dummy problem before seeing the solution found, or not found, by the players.

One of the things that has changed with the new scenario is the bridge. Here, rather than playing almost exclusively in duplicate tournaments, the characters are almost always seen playing rubber bridge, often for substantial stakes. That does change the nature of the problems that are set and in general, they seem to be easier and less interesting than the puzzles that face the Abbot and his monks. To be picky the bridge problems are not without mistake. On at least one hand the line of play described in the narrative does not lead to the end position shown in tabular form.

The humour changes also. While the St. Titus books are close to the "Yes Minister" school of humour, Robin Hood and his friends come right out of the bawdy end of a "Carry on" film. Keen Bridge players are rarely prudes but they are not so likely to be amused by jokes about which player ends up with which cheap ....

Compared to the "Abbot" books then, this is not so good. If your are new to David Bird, I would suggest one of the books in the monks series as a far better introduction. Fans of David Bird's bridge humour will be interested in this books in any case and, while it is not of the highest standard, it is still above average for the genre.