Header image with four cats and the text: Pussreboots, a book review nearly every day. Online since 1997
Now 2025 Previous Articles Road Essays Road Reviews Author Black Authors Title Source Age Genre Series Format Inclusivity LGBTA+ Art Portfolio Purchase Art WIP

Recent posts


Month in review

Reviews
Beast & Crown by Joel Ross
Beyond the Bright Sea by Lauren Wolk
Boundless by Jillian Tamaki
Carrying Albert Home by Homer Hickam
CatStronauts: Space Station Situation by Drew Brockington
Demon, Volume 4 by Jason Shiga
Feathertop by Robert D. San Souci
14 Hollow Road by Jenn Bishop
From Ant to Eagle by Alex Lyttle
The Great Shelby Holmes Meets Her Match by Elizabeth Eulberg
Hear the Wolves by Victoria Scott
Lights, Camera, Middle School! by Jennifer L. Holm
The Looney Experiment by Luke Reynolds
The Losers Club by Andrew Clements
The Lost Kingdom of Bamarre by Gail Carson Levine Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar
Macy McMillan and the Rainbow Goddess by Shari Green
Murder on the Half Shelf by Lorna Barrett
One Last Word: Wisdom from the Harlem Renaissance by Nikki Grimes
One Mixed-Up Night by Catherine Newman
Ordinary Mishaps and Inevitable Catastrophes by Booki Vivat
Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder
Paper Girls Volume 3 by Brian K. Vaughan
Piecing Me Together by Renée Watson
Red Leech by Andrew Lane
Refugee by Alan Gratz
Ripped From the Pages by Kate Carlisle
The Scarebird by Sid Fleischman and Peter Sís
See You in the Cosmos by Jack Cheng
Walking with Miss Millie by Tamara Bundy
Wildlife Photographer of the Year: Portfolio 25 by Rosamund Kidman Cox

Miscellaneous
2017 books read and reviewed
Back Half round-up: Favorite books read and reviewed from July-December 2017 Canadian Books reviewed in 2017
Diverse Books Reviewed in 2017
First Book of the Year Graphic Novels Reviewed in 2017
It's Monday, What Are You Reading (December 04)
It's Monday, What Are You Reading (December 11)
It's Monday, What Are You Reading (December 18)
It's Monday, What Are You Reading (December 25)
Mysteries reviewed in 2017
Road Narrative Summary
November 2017 sources
November 2017 summary

Previous month


Rating System

5 stars: Completely enjoyable or compelling
4 stars: Good but flawed
3 stars: Average
2 stars: OK
1 star: Did not finish


Privacy policy

This blog does not collect personal data. It doesn't set cookies. Email addresses are used to respond to comments or "contact us" messages and then deleted.


Feathertop: 12/22/17

Feathertop by Robert D. San Souci

Feathertop by Robert D. San Souci is a retelling in picture book form of Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story. Mother Rigby, a witch of some renowned, decides to make a scarecrow for her cornfield. She dresses him up in old fancy clothes. So pleased with her work, she decides to bring him to life and send him to a local fancy ball.

Of course any time you send something out on its own, it's bound to do something other or more than what you planned. Feathertop ends up catching the eye of a young lady of means. She falls in love and so does he.

Except when he looks in the mirror he can see that he's not the fancy man she thinks he is. So disheartened at the reality of his situation, he leaves the party and begs to be a scarecrow.

In this regard, Feathertop is an interesting and early version of the reluctant scarecrow — a role most popularized by The Scarecrow from the Oz books.

Mother Rigby, though a witch, isn't evil. She feels sorry for the now despondent young woman who has lost her one true love. Or maybe she's just amused by a foolish aristocrat falling in love with a scarecrow. Regardless, she turns Feathertop real once again for a happy ending.

From the smirk on her face in the last pages, it's implied that Feathertop isn't her first scarecrow let free. Nor, will he be the last, as she is shown gathering together her materials again. It could even be implied that all those other aldermen (or many of them) were her creations too.

As this version is primarily a simplified picture book, with most of the story being retold in the illustrations, I'm going to leave deeper analysis for the actual story. It is available for download in a collection of short stories on Project Gutenberg: Mosses from an Old Manse and other stories.

For the road narrative project, I believe this retelling is too far removed from the original to do a deeper analysis.

Three stars

Comments (0)


Lab puppy
Name:
Email (won't be posted):
Blog URL:
Comment:

Tumblr Mastadon Flickr Facebook Facebook Contact me

1997-2025 Sarah Sammis