Swamp Angel

 Swamp Angel By Anne Isaacs

Bibliographic data  

Isaacs, A., & Zelinsky, P. O. (1996). Swamp Angel. Trumpet Club. ISBN:0525452710 

 

Brief plot summary  

    This is a story about a girl named Angelica Longrider , who was born taller than her mother. She grew up in Tennessee and was a very tall and large person. Angelica received the nickname Swamp Angel for saving wagon trains from the swamp. One day a big bear with the name Thundering Tarnation was causing havoc in Tennessee town. He was eating everyone's food and tearing up things. Before long, the settlers had no food and so they set up a competition to kill the bear. The reward was Tarnation's enormous fur pelt. Many men signed up to hunt Tarnation and many men failed. Swamp Angel signed up and had a long tussle with Tarnation but eventually proved to be victorious. After the celebration of the win, Swamp Angel took the fur pelt and headed to Montana.  

 

Critical analysis  

 This is the author, Anne Isaacs, first book. This story is a Tall Tale that has lots of irony, hyperboles, and fun dialects of settlers in the Tennessee mountains. The story was also written to explain how certain geographic areas were created in an exaggerated format. "Locked in a bearhug, Swamp Angel and Thundering Tarnation wrestled across the hills of Tennessee. They stirred up so much dust that those hills are still called the Great Smoky Mountains.”  The illustrator Paul O. Zelinsky painted cherry and maple veneers. The pictures look as if they are portraits in a wooden frame. His artwork is very rustic, but it fits in with the time and place that the story takes place. 

Review excerpt(s)  

• Publishers Weekly (October 3, 1994) This valiant heroine is certain to leave youngsters chuckling-and perhaps even keeping a close watch on the night sky. 

• Horn Book Guide starred (March 1995) An original creation in the tall-tale tradition, Isaacs' rip-roaring narrative tells of a pioneer woman's transformation into Swamp Angel, summarizes her developing abilities, and focuses on her greatest triumph: the defeat of a marauding bear.  

• School Library Journal (November 1997) Thundering Tarnation! With its good-natured, larger-than-life heroine and broad, fanciful paintings, this original Tennessee tall tale is exhilarating and side-splittingly funny 

• Caldecott Honor 1995 

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 Connections  

• Read the story Doña Flor: A Tall Tale About a Giant Woman with a Great Big Heart written by Pat Mora and write a list of similarities and differences between the two stories. 

• In Swamp Angel, we learn that Tarnation has a constellation in the sky, and their wrestling created enough dust to create the Great Smoky Mountains. With a partner think of another geographic area or landform and create a Tall Tale on how that place was created. 

• The student will explain the characteristics of a Tall Tale using text evidence from the story to support the characteristics.