The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood

Our big kid (age 7) is a great reader. She still enjoys family story time, but the writing is on the wall--we are not going to be reading to her at bedtime forever. Needed to bring the A game, and Howard Pyle's Robin Hood absolutely qualified. The chapters are self-contained stories, with lots of swashbuckling and physical comedy, and a ton of stylized word play that she really got a kick out of, even if we needed to sometimes translate. The whole family is now saying "Methinks" and "Forsooth". Also, we are considering beginning a theft ring.

The original text is preserved and generally fornatted well, but the illustrations are not Howard Pyle's and are frankly very poor. I cannot overstate how bad they are. Computer generated, irrelevant to the story, and lacking any interesting detail.If you are going to buy the classic Howard Pyle version of the legend, I strongly encourage you to only buy an edition with Howard Pyle as the illustrator.

The Howard Pyle version of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood seemed to be the version with the most editions available, so I figured that would be a good starting place for Robin Hood stories. Silly me once again forgot that I had already purchased the Audible version of the book (the Audible version is not free, but I think I got it as a daily deal or something) and got the Kindle version too. Since the Kindle version is a cheap edition of a really old book, I did not particularly expect the Kindle and audiobooks to sync up, but they actually did pretty well together.John Lee does a great job with the narration, voicing everybody from the evil Guy of Gisbourne to the shifty Sheriff of Nottingham with fine distinction. He even sings all the many songs in the book in character very well. According to the section in the Kindle book about the author (this part was not in the audiobook version) Howard Pyle based his version of the Robin Hood stories on a 1795 collection of ballads, so nearly every tale, especially in the first part of the book, has a merry song or two in it.Apparently, there is no original manuscript to base a rendition of the Robin Hood stories on so this collection of ballads may be as close to an original source as we are likely to get. In consequence, while the language of these stories has a suitably Medieval cast to it, it is nevertheless reasonably easy to understand. It’s not like trying to read Middle English or anything.And yet, the stories are set in a time when Middle English would not have been so far off the mark. This collection actually focuses on a time period somewhat earlier than the more recent popular renditions of Robin Hood in the movies. Throughout most of the book, the King is King Henry II. In fact, Henry and his Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine, appear in a couple of the stories. Queen Eleanor sponsors Robin Hood and some of his men in a tournament, and King Henry, upset that they have beaten some of his favorites, hunts them all over the north of England. This must have been during the time Henry and Eleanor weren’t getting along so well.There were many stories in this book that I had not heard before, or barely heard references to somewhere. And a lot of the stories found in recent renditions of Robin Hood are not there. For instance, Maid Marian is mentioned about three times as the girl Robin Hood loves best, but her story is not told at all. Instead, we have the story of Allan A Dale and his true love, Ellen, and how Robin Hood saved fair Ellen from marrying an old knight so that she could marry the minstrel instead. Guy of Gisbourne is not a knight but another outlaw with an evil reputation whom the Sheriff of Nottingham has hired to kill Robin Hood. And it is King Richard who, after his father’s death and his own accession to the throne, finally catches Robin Hood – and takes him into his personal service.

I am reading this with my 8 year old daughter and I love how she is learning to read and understand a rich text. A "right stout yeoman" and "cudgel" are just a sample of the writings. It is amazing how modern stories have been "dumbed down" for today's children. You won't be disappointed with that in this book. My only complaint so far (we are about 8 chapters into it) is that we've lost our picture pages. There will be a big box of white space where you know the picture should be, but no picture. Disappointing for sure. I would also caution that this is not the Disney version of Robin Hood. The Merry Men drink ale, lie, steal, fight and do other things that you may or may not agree with. I find it a good talking point for my daughter.

Didn't know how I would fee about this book as I should have read it when I was much younger, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially for its light deft touch on the man, his associates and his stories. Pyle, who was actually an illustrator who took this and other stories and adapted them for young people, did just that with Robin Hood, creating most definitely an unreal happy-go-lucky, gentle thief who lives in the woods and takes from the rich "to give to the poor."The stories are funny, light and easy to read (only some old English to contend with). If you're looking for a break from the violent, blood, serious or supernatural, here is a good choice.

This was the first time I ever liked an audiobook SO much that I sought out the buy the printed book, and I wanted it specifically to read the songs. It's a very light-hearted book, and can be read quickly if you gloss over all the "thee, thou, dost" language, but that is part of what, for me, makes it so charming. You mostly follow Robin and his merry men on their adventures, and there is not much character development or dynamics, but this book abounds with wit, woodland metaphors, and (sometimes) clever pranks.

This book is nearly unreadable. The text is unintelligible in some places. Almost like a bad translation. For example, in the original text, Robin Hood comes upon a group of men lounging around a "great oak tree." In this book, it's a "super okaytree." No, there is no space between "okay" and "tree." At that point, just a few pages in, I'd suffered enough. I downloaded the free Kindle version from Project Gutenberg.Don't waste your money on this version of the book. There are other versions available. I would recommend downloading a sample first, though.

Looks amazing at this whole set dose. Classic story. Not much more to say :)

This book uses old English and tells the story of Robin Hood in such a wonderful way, until I read this book Robin Hood was just a fictional character to me almost like a superhero but this book made him so real and all the characters too, the pictures are charming and it's a book that should take centre stage in any collection. Thoroughly enjoyable for teen readers.

beautiful

Beautiful edition. Highly recommendable for every Robin Hood fan.

excellent