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Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby
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Br'er Rabbit and the Tar Baby

Joel Chandler Harris

Dear Readers: It’s a week for slangand that, I guess, is close enough for a really rich and colorful story told in southern and African-American dialect, from the late 1800’s. This is probably the most famous of all Joel Chandler Harris’s stories about Br’er Rabbit and Br’er Fox, a story I read in mostly regular English when I was a little boy. And it has given American English the word “tar-baby,” to mean something that you’d better not get tangled up with, because if you do, you’re just going to get caught worse and worse. But Br’er Rabbit comes out of it all right in the end — he has to, because he’s Br’er Rabbit, outfoxing Br’er Fox!

I hope you will enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed reading it. This one too is for children of all ages.

Illustration, Public Domain.

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