What's a retired infantry colonel doing reviewing a children's book about a coyote?
Fair question. Here's the context: my granddaughter Ellie was staying with us last weekend, and Linda had the brilliant idea that I should find something we could listen to together during the drive to her Saturday morning swim lesson. So I pulled up this Thornton Burgess story - under two hours, animal characters, seemed safe enough. Ranger was in the back seat. Ellie was in her booster. And Old Man Coyote had all three of us locked in.
Let me cut to the chase: this is a charming little book from 1916 that holds up way better than it has any right to.
A Coyote Walks Into the Green Forest and Nobody Knows What to Do
The premise is dead simple. Old Man Coyote shows up as a stranger in the established community of the Green Meadow and Green Forest. Nobody knows what he is. Nobody knows what he can do. And that uncertainty - that intelligence gap, if you will - drives every interaction in the book. Granny Fox is territorial and cunning but can't figure out Coyote's angle. Peter Rabbit is predictably nervous. Prickly Porky gets into what Burgess describes as a "sharp confrontation" with Coyote, and it's genuinely the highlight of the book - Coyote's overconfidence meets a face full of quills, and even my granddaughter laughed at that one.
I've seen this scenario play out in real life - new element enters an established AO, and everyone scrambles to assess the threat level. Burgess wrote this for kids, but there's a surprisingly smart little lesson about adaptation and territorial dynamics baked in. The way Coyote matches wits with Granny Fox specifically - each one trying to outmaneuver the other, neither willing to show weakness - it's a decent primer on competitive intelligence. For a book aimed at six-year-olds.
Burgess was a conservationist, and you can feel it. He's not just anthropomorphizing these animals for cute factor. Each one behaves roughly the way its real-world counterpart would. Coyote is smart, opportunistic, adaptable. Fox is cunning but set in her ways. Kipling does something similar in Complete Just So Stories — animals that feel behaviorally true even while they're delivering a moral, and a narrator who reads like someone who actually respects the creatures he's describing. Porcupine doesn't chase fights but wins them decisively. There's genuine respect for the natural world underneath the talking-animal surface.
John Lieder Behind the Mic
Here's where I have to be honest - the research didn't turn up much on Lieder's performance specifics, and at 1 hour 46 minutes, this is a LibriVox-style recording, not a big studio production. The audio is clean enough, and Lieder reads with steady clarity. He doesn't do wildly different character voices - this isn't a full-cast production by any stretch - but his pacing is appropriate for the material. He reads like a patient adult reading to a child, which is exactly what this needs.
I listened at normal speed for once (Ellie's in the car, I'm not going to crank it to 1.25x on a kids' book), and the pacing felt right. Short chapters. Simple sentences. Burgess's repetitive style - he circles back to key phrases and ideas the way oral storytellers do - works well in audio. Kids latch onto that repetition. Ellie kept saying "Old Man Coyote" in this very serious voice for the rest of the weekend.
The production value is basic. No sound effects, no music. Just a guy reading a book. For this particular title, that's fine. You're not buying this for audiophile quality.
Who's This Actually For?
Parents and grandparents looking for short, clean, genuinely engaging audio for kids roughly ages 4-8. It's also a decent pick for anyone interested in early American children's literature or conservation history. If you're an adult looking for your next thriller, you're in the wrong aisle - but you knew that.
The book runs under two hours, which is perfect for a road trip activity or a couple of bedtime sessions. My one knock: some of the language is dated (it's over a hundred years old), and very young kids might need a pause here and there for explanation. But that's also kind of the charm.
Worth your time? Here's the debrief: it's a sweet, smart little story that doesn't talk down to kids, and the audio version gets the job done without any frills. Ranger approved this one. Ellie approved it twice.
Not everything has to explode. Sometimes a coyote getting a face full of porcupine quills is enough.
