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15 of 16 found the following review helpful:
 Naturalistic polemic in duck's clothing. May 13, 2002
By darragh o'donoghue
I always had Beatrix Potter down as an avatar of Home Counties tweeness, with her anti-modern paeans to the countryside and de liddle cuddly animals. So the unsentimental brutalities of this story came as a welcome shock. 'Jemima Puddle-Duck' is as endearingly hopeless as her name suggests, unable to tend her eggs in the overcrowded barn she shares with some supercilious hens. She flies over the forest in search of a suitably solitary spot, and comes across a helpful gentleman dressed in tweed, reading 'The Sporting Times'. He is a fox, and invites her to make use of his summer residence, in particular the shed carpeted with the feathers of previous victims. Dazzled by his good breeding, Jemima accepts his offer and visits daily. When the eggs are about to hatch, Foxy suggests she bring along various goodies so they can have a charming goodbye party...The unremitting violence in this story does not emanate from where you'd expect, and this clear-eyed vision of the natural order of things, of brute force vs. cunning, takes place in the most idyllic setting yuou can think of, a richly detailed rural England, its hills and plants alive and painted in the most soothing colours. But even this balmy backdrop plays out a cycle of struggle for domination, with spiders eating flies, and various other creatures being horrid to one another. Written at the turn of the 20th century, just before female emancipation, it's hard not to see the woebegotten Jemima as an image of women's fate in a world run by men, both good and bad, with the fox as parisitic aristo in straitened circumstances, and the dog as paternalistic liberal. Indeed, the whole thing plays like an Emile Zola potboiler disguised as toddler fodder. Upsetting, cruel and marvellous.
8 of 8 found the following review helpful:
 Jemima Puddleduck without the Pictures Mar 07, 2010
By Louie Louie
This IS the story of Jemima Puddleduck, and it can be read to children. It loses a lot of its interest value without the pictures, but the story is still good.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck Nov 03, 2000
By V. Charbonneau
The Tale of Jemima Puddle-Duck was the first Beatrix Potter book I read when I was young. It is the tale of a barnyard duck named Jemima who wishes to hatch her own eggs instead of leaving the task to the hens. She decides to leave and find a place to nest and encounters a polite gentleman with sandy whiskers who so kindly offers his help. It is a charming tale, as so many of Ms. Potter's stories are, complete with an endearing if not somewhat naive duck, a handsome yet sly fox and a wise old collie dog. The illustrations are quite nice, with some beautiful countryside scenes of Sawrey where the author lived. This story is a pleasure to read.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 No pictures Aug 28, 2011
By Skooter
Without pictures this book is incomplete at best. Beatrix is known for her beautiful pictures and it is wrong, even insulting, to present her works without them. There is good news however... project gutenberg has translated ALL beatrix Potter books with pictures for the Kindle free (if you read on a color device such as a pc, you can see the pictures in color). You can get to project gutenberg here...[...]
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Great little story Apr 19, 2011
By msladyjt
Granted this version of the story has no pictures but it still is a great read. A helpful activity to engage your child might be to have them create their own picture book of the story well you read it. Only a small part at the end that I thought would not be ok for the 6 and under crowd but adults should always preread to double check. Very good story.
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