Condensed Fairy Tales

A Guide to Telling Your Children the Fabulous and Famous Fairy Tales That You Knew Once Upon a Time

(This book was published by Penguin books as Tell Me a Fairy Tale. It is currently in print.)

This document is posted here for information purposes and may not be edited, altered, sold or re-published in any form.

We have a great book about getting published and writing book proposals. Click here to find out more about The Successful Literary Agent's Guide to Getting Published.

by Bill Adler, Jr.

Is your three-year-old getting tired of hearing Goldilocks every evening? Are you getting tired of telling it? Do you wish you knew another fairy tale? And do you wish you had a quick and easy source for fairy tales?

Then Condensed Fairy Tales: A Guide to Telling Your Children the Fabulous and Famous Fairy Tales That You Knew Once Upon a Time is the book that will answer your dreams. Condensed Fairy Tales contains summaries of 51 of the most popular children's fairy tales, fables and legends. Each fairy tale condensation is no more than three pages, so it won't take longer than five minutes to get up to speed on any particular story.

Some of these stories are classics like Little Red Riding Hood. Others are classic American tales such as John Henry. Others are from African-American literature, such as The Little Bird Grows. Still others are from Native American cultures, like The Little Scarred One. Some of the tales are from distant lands—Two of Everything is Korean; Casperl is German.

Each condensation contains:

1. a brief summary of the story;

2. a description of the characters in the tale;

3. a plot description;

4. how to tell the tale.

Each tale will be accompanied by an illustration. The illustration isn't to show to your child (though you can); rather its purpose is to give the parent a better sense of the flavor of the story. Many legends and fairy tales have rhymes; these will be included.

If you ever used Cliff Notes you'll recognize the enormous potential and time-saving abilities of a book like Condensed Fairy Tales. Like Cliff Notes, Condensed Fairy Tales is designed to help you with your mission.

This book was conceived by Bill Adler, Jr. who got very, very tired of telling Goldilocks to his two-and-a-half year-old daughter, Karen, every night and nap time. While there was no real evidence that Karen was tiring of the tale, Bill was. And when in the interest of sanity, he skipped a part, like the business about sitting in the chairs, Karen was quick to insist "the chairs!"

If only he knew something else to tell!

The problem was that Bill had little interest in buying fairy tale anthologies. First, a complete collection would have been expensive, and heavy to carry back from the store. Second, to actually read outloud the tales from a book would take nearly half an hour each evening. Karen would never put up with leaving a tale unfinished for the next night. Finally, it's much more enjoyable to tell a story, than read one—especially if you know the ending. When you tell a story, there's unlimited flexibility; your imagination can permeate the tale. Once you know the basic plot of a story you can embellish it, even personalize it to incorporate your child if you wish. Or you can shorten the story to hasten the advent of dream-time.

The book will include an introduction that explains how to tell a fairy tale, and how to change one to suit your whimsy.

Condensed Fairy Tales is not a long book—deliberately so. Condensed Fairy Tales is meant to be unintimidating. Parents don't want to reread all the classic fairy tales and legends themselves; they just want to tell them for their children to enjoy. By keeping Condensed Fairy Tales short, potential buyers won't be frightened away.

The Market

Unfortunately, there is no specific, targetable group of potential buyers for Condensed Fairy Tales as there would be for a book on, say, birdfeeding or golf. That does not mean, however, that the market for this book isn't strong or deep—on the contrary, there is ample evidence that the market for this book is superb.

Pollsters tell us that people, and parents in particular, value time. When asked whether they would rather have a salary increase or more vacation time, most middle and upper middle class Americans insist that they would rather have more time. Time to spend with their families, their children, at home. People joke about the term "quality time;" yet this is exactly what many of us seek. Condensed Fairy Tales helps satisfy that need.

Exactly who will buy Condensed Fairy Tales? An educated parent, male or female, who believes that his or her child deserves more than stale, ordinary, and often sexist, fairy tales. This parent will be employed full-time, and will have an urge to spend more time with the children.

How do these parents describe themselves? Smart, harried, successful, well read (at least once upon a time, when they had time). These parents also admit that they have forgotten many fairy tales and are simply at a loss to tell their children anything other than mangled versions of Goldilocks or Little Red Riding Hood.

Condensed Fairy Tales is aimed at parents with children between the ages of one and eight years. It fills an important market niche among parenting books.

The Competition

` How to count the competition? There is plenty. Most of the competition, however falls into one of two categories: anthologies of fairy tales, and illustrated, individual books of fairy tales. Nearly every major publisher has produced these kinds of books. Books of both categories are too numerous to list here—they number in the hundreds—but it is apparent that these books differ markedly from Condensed Fairy Tales. Look at The Random House Book of Fairy Tales (by Amy Erlich, $17.00, 205 pages, hardcover, Random House, 1985), for example. This is a lovely book, as attested to by the fact that it's been in print since 1985. But it is typical of fairy tale anthologies: long stories, lavishly illustrated. Parents are supposed to read these stories, or children can read them on their own when they're old enough.

The Random House book contains the traditional tales. If you want to read, well, less traditional children's stories, you have to hunt a little for an anthology like Afro-American Folk Tales (by Roger Abrahams, $15.00, 325 pages, cloth, Pantheon books, 1985.) Not all the stories in this book are meant to be read to children, as some are longer than the attention span of a typical child. But Afro-American Folk Tales is a good reference book, and it preserves some important stories. The same comments can be made for Gypsy Folk Tales (by Diane Tong, $12.95, 252 pages, paper, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,1989.) It's a valuable book, though not necessarily a good book to read to children.

There is an abundance of books about individual fairy tales. Most of these range in price from about $4.95 for paperbacks to $19.95 for four-color illustrated books. These are books that parents read and show to their small children; in the hands of toddlers these books don't last long.

Perhaps the most direct competition to Condensed Fairy Tales comes from Shari Lewis' One-Minute Favorite Fairy Tales ($3.99, 48 pages, paper, Dell, 1985.) Shari Lewis, whose fame comes from the morning children's television program featuring the puppet Lamb Chops, has written a series of these books including One-Minute Bedtime Stories, One-Minute Animal Stories, and One-Minute Scary Stories—thirteen in the series in all. These are terrific books, and are indeed competitive to Condensed Fairy Tales. But Shari Lewis' stories are meant to be read, while the stories in Condensed Fairy Tales are meant to be told. The stories in One-Minute Fairy Tales are so short that they leave out much of the richness of the tales. Condensed Fairy Tales, on the other hand, offers the complete story and leaves it up to the parent how to tell the story. It's a matter of preference.

Finally, there's a book on the market called Tell Me a Story (by Chase Collins $8.95, 180 pages, paper, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992.) This book devotes itself to telling parents how to tell a story. The book achieves its purpose well, but most parents are interested in telling traditional or historical fairy tales. Condensed Fairy Tales devotes about ten pages to how to tell a story, which is sufficient for most parents'—and children's—needs.

Contents

Introduction:

How to tell a fairy tale; how to modify a fairy tale—shorten it, lengthen it, personalize it.

Aladdin

Androcles and the Lion

Ashputtel

Beauty and the Beast

Between the Fiddler and the Dancer

Br'er Rabbit

Casperl

Cinderella

Damon and Pythias

Daniel in the Lion's Den

Goldilocks

Hansel and Gretel

Jack and the Beanstalk

John Henry

Johnny Appleseed

Johnny Cake

Noah's Ark

Paul Bunyan

Pinocchio

Puss 'n Boots

Rapunzel

Little Red Riding Hood

Romeo and Juliet

Rumpelstiltskin

Scheherazade

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White

The Dreamer

The Elves and the Shoemaker

The Emperor's New Clothes

The Frog Prince

The House on the Hill

The Little Bird Grows

The Little Engine that Could

The Little Scarred One

The Lost Half-Hour

The Princess and the Pea

The Snow Queen

The Sorcorer's Apprentice

The Three Little Pigs

The Tin Soldier

The Tortoise and the Hare

The Tug-of-War Between the Elephant and the Whale

The Twelve Dancing Princesses

The Ugly Duckling

The Valiant Little Tailor

Three Billy Goats Gruff

Thumbelina

Two of Everything

Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree

Appendix

Where to find full-length children's stories.

Sample Material: Introduction; Three Stories

Excerpt from The Introduction

One of the first things you discover when you read or tell fairy tales to your child is that many are frightening—or so they seem to us. Take the story of Rumpelstiltskin, for example. In this story a poor miller, seeking favor with the king, promises the king that his daughter can spin hay into gold. The king seizes the daughter and tells her that she must perform this feat or she will be killed in the morning. Rumpelstiltskin appears, making the gold-spinning possible, but the dwarf magician exacts a grave price on the daughter. Well, as with most fairy tales, Rumpelstiltskin has a happy ending, and that's part of the point, too.

Yet children don't seem scared by these tales, or if they do, they don't reveal their fear. (Psychologists explain this behavior in a number of ways, none of which are terribly relevant to the telling of fairy tales.*)

When you tell a story using Condensed Fairy Tales you can make it as frightening, or benign as you want. Let's look at Rumpelstiltskin again. In the G-rated version, the miller, who recognizes that the kingdom is poor, (suffering a major trade imbalance perhaps), tells the king that his daughter can turn straw into gold. The king, somewhat disbelieving, agrees that the daughter can try. Rumpelstiltskin, a magician, offers to perform this magic for the daughter—for a price. When the king finds out, he banishes Rumpelstiltskin and marries the daughter because she tried.

See what you can do if you don't stick to the prescribed plot? Another option is to turn out-of-date fairy tales into less sexist or less stereotyped stories, if you prefer. For example, instead of having the fair maiden waiting to be rescued by the handsome prince, she can be plotting and attempting her escape.

One twist I like to make in Goldilocks is, at the end, when Goldilocks is discovered sleeping in baby bear's bed. She's still very tired, so Goldilocks runs all the way home to her crib to take a nap. My daughter, Karen, insists on completing Goldilocks with the "nap" even if I forget—and then puts her head down on the pillow.

The stories in Condensed Fairy Tales lack some of the detail that appears in the full-blown story. So feel free to add as many details as you want. Describe clothes, shoes, hats, houses, rooms, sounds, what the characters look like, gardens, individual trees, pictures on the walls, food on the table, window coverings, smells, the sky that day—anything you want. Is the house big, the air cool, the leaves green or turning colors, the fireplace lit? How do the characters walk, smile, sound? Is the house made of wood or stone and is it covered with ivy? You get the idea. Add dialog, too. Make up the words—after all, the original story tellers did. Feel free, of course, to incorporate elements of your child into the tale—your daughter's name, your son's clothes, for example.

Most of all, keep an eye on your child. Vary the rhythm of the story, as needed. If your child is falling asleep, by all means, continue talking about the colors, shapes, smells of the objects in the rooms—these kind of details help summon dream-time. If your son or daughter loves animals (what child doesn't?) then add more critters to your version than there were in the original. If your child isn't excited about cleaning his or her room, maybe some of the characters in your stories clean up a lot.

Some tales are best told in the present tense; others in the past. Use what best suits your inclinations.

In Condensed Fairy Tales you'll find a wide variety of fairy tales including the classics—Grimm, Mother Goose. There are also some Bible tales, as well as some stories from other cultures. These less well known stories are a good way of acquainting your child to other cultures, not to mention providing more entertainment.

Many fairy tales and fables don't make a whole lot of sense to adults. The plots don't hold together, the characters motivations aren't credible. So what? The stories do make sense to children.

In many of the original stories, characters do not have names. So create your own.

Magic is the principle ingredient in all fairy tales. Don't skimp here. Children have no trouble believing, and the more magic, the more fun.

You are the storyteller, which makes you a central character in each story. Change the pitch of your voice to talk like a woman, talk like a man, talk like a child, even talk like an animal. Vary the rhythm of your words. Be out of breath when it's called for; speak quietly or loudly as the role requires. Sound effects—whistling, foot stomping, a clap, a gasp, snapping a finger—may be part of the story, too.

Finally, remember that every fairy tale usually begins, "Once upon a time..."

How to Use this Book

You won't gain a complete understanding of each story by reading the summary alone. The summary is meant to provide the basic framework for the story's plot. The character sketches provide the raw material for creating the individuals who inhabit these tales. The characters are listed so that you won't forget anybody.

At the end of the plot description are suggestions on how you might tell the story, and how you could modify it. Following that is a page for notes to write down your own variations.

Back to the main Adler & Robin Books Literary Agency page

Two of Everything

Summary

A poor Korean farmer comes across a brass pot while digging in his small vegetable garden. The pot, the farmer and his wife discover, makes two of anything you put inside it. First they try odds and ends; then money. By accident, the farmer's wife falls into the pot—there are now two of her! An odd marriage. But accidents can happen again and the farmer leaps—or falls?—into the pot, which solves their problem.

The Characters

Mr. Kim-Soon. The poor farmer.

Mrs. Kim-Soon. The poor farmer's wife.

The Plot

Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon live in a tiny cottage on the side of a mountain. They have a small patch of land on which to grow food.

One day Mr. Kim-Soon unearthed a large brass pot, which was itself unusual because the farmer thought he knew every inch of that soil. Too big for a cooking pot, too small for a bath, Mrs. Kim-Soon decided.

Then she dropped a hairpin in the pot. When she reached inside to retrieve the pin, there were two identical pins. After checking to see that no hairpins were missing, Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon experimented by putting in a sack of lentils. Out came two sacks! Then they tried their purses; out came two purses.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon put in purse after purse until they decided just putting in money would be simpler.

That evening Mrs. Kim-Soon put in some rice and out came enough rice for an entire meal. She turned their one candle into twenty.

Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon would never be wanting again.

The next day Mrs. Kim-Soon was making more cabbage in the magic brass pot, when Mr. Kim-Soon walked in the door. She balanced the bundles of cabbage while running over to greet her husband, but lost her balance and fell into the pot. Mr. Kim-Soon pulled Mrs. Kim-Soon out by her legs, but out of the pot emerged two Mrs. Kim-Soons, exactly alike. Mrs. Kim-Soon exclaimed that she would not put up with another Mrs. Kim-Soon in the house.

Mrs. Kim-Soon said "Put her back in the pot," but Mr. Kim-Soon was quick to point out that that would only make more Mrs. Kim-Soons. Mr. Kim-Soon took a few steps backwards and fell—was it an accident?—into the pot.

Mrs. Kim-Soon pulled him out. Then pulled out the other Mr. Kim-Soon.

But now there wasn't a problem of what to do with the extra Mrs. Kim-Soon.

The two new Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soons set up house next door. Their neighbors though it was curious that Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon suddenly prospered, and that a couple who looked a lot like Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon had moved in next door. A close relation of Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon said that it was evident that Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon had become so rich that they decided to have two of everything, including themselves.

How to Tell the Story

As you can imagine, Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon did not eat meat often; when they had excess food (which was not often), they traded it for necessities such as oil for their lamps, and clothing. Their poorness was a kind of old world, small village impoverishment. Yet they were happy.

But much happier after they found the brass pot. Invent some dialog by imagining if you had found such a pot. Now imagine that suddenly you had two of the same wife—or husband. There would be a bit of confusion, to say the least. The bantering between Mr. and Mrs. Kim-Soon must have been amusing.

Lastly, you can spend some time describing their house, their clothing, and, of course, the big brass pot.

Rapunzel

Summary

Rapunzel is the story of a child who is raised by an evil witch, and who grows long, beautiful hair. Rapunzel lives in a tower; the only way up to the tower is to climb Rapunzel's hair. Rapunzel sees nobody but the witch until a prince wanders by one day, and climbs up her hair. The witch punishes Rapunzel, and later the prince is hurt falling from the tower; but eventually the prince and Rapunzel live happily every after.

The Characters

Rapunzel's Mother

Wants a child, and after much wanting becomes pregnant. Enigmatically, she covets a vegetable growing in the witch's garden called a rapunzel, . (Is this the witch's doing?) Her need for the rapunzel is so great that she becomes pale and weak.

Rapunzel's Father

Also wants a child badly. Yields to his wife's needs. Both the mother and father disappear from the story shortly after Rapunzel is born.

The Witch

An evil, mysterious character, with the classic, repulsive look of a witch. Her source of income isn't revealed, but her powers seem limited only by her inclinations. Despite her evilness, there is a hint of loneliness and pity about her. Her motives are unclear. Called Mother Gothel by Rapunzel.

Rapunzel

The star of the story. It's never known how Rapunzel's hair becomes so long—perhaps genetic, perhaps a consequence of the witch's powers. Rapunzel is beautiful and lonely, lonelier even than the witch. How Rapunzel occupies her day isn't clear; perhaps braiding and unbraiding her hair is a full-time pastime.

The Prince

The king's son. Handsome and valiant, like all princes. Not much substance, so the prince's character and looks can be embellished as much as you like.

The Plot

A husband and wife long for a child, and after many years the wife becomes pregnant.

The couple live in a house adjacent to a witch's house. From their house they can see the witch's garden, which is surrounded by a high wall.

The wife becomes enchanted, almost enthralled, with the rapunzel, an unusual leafy vegetable, growing in the witch's garden; she grows pale and weak because she cannot have the rapunzel. Finally the husband goes into the witch's garden, gathers some rapunzel, and makes a salad for them.

When the witch finds out (you expected she wouldn't?), she threatens to cast a terrible spell on the husband and wife. Only by promising the witch their child do they avoid the spell.

The couple name the child Rapunzel; almost immediately afterwards Rapunzel is spirited away by the witch. When Rapunzel is twelve she is made to live alone in a tower in the forest. Over the years, Rapunzel grows the longest, most beautiful hair in the world. Rapunzel herself becomes the most beautiful woman in the world. The only way up to Rapunzel's room in the tower is by climbing up her hair, which she must braid to make this possible. That's how the witch brings food and other necessities.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair / and I will climb up the golden stair" is the witch's frequent request.

One day a prince wanders by. He hears Rapunzel singing from her room and becomes captivated. One day he hides near the tower and watches the witch say, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair."

The next night he visits Rapunzel. When he gets to Rapunzel's room, she is frightened, because she had never seen a man before. But the prince is kind and Rapunzel decides she wants to marry him. The prince visits many times more.

The witch was unaware of the prince's visits until Rapunzel asks the witch why she was so much heavier climbing up her hair than the prince. The witch is angered, cuts Rapunzel's hair off, and banishes her in the wilderness.

When the prince comes to visit, he climbs up Rapunzel's hair, but the witch is at the other end. The prince, in grief, leaps from the tower. Not killed, he is blinded by landing on thorns.

The prince wanders the wilderness for many years. Finally he hears that familiar, sweet voice. It is Rapunzel, who hugs the prince and weeps on him. Her tears un-blind the prince. They live happily ever after.

How to Tell the Story

Rapunzel can be shortened by skipping ahead twelve years: Rapunzel, captured by a witch, lives in the tower of a castle, is a fair beginning.

Or, you can embelish the story: The witch's castle is cold and dark. Paintings of witch ancestors cover the walls. (Where do witches come from, anyway?) Preface the prince's appearance with some background about his character—perhaps he is an archer, perhaps a clever hunter. How did the witch raise Rapunzel? How did she dress Rapunzel?

Because the story takes place over many years, you have the opportunity to fill in those years with details. Not, "The prince wandered the forest for years." Instead, describe how the prince lived during those years. Maybe the prince and Rapunzel wandered within feet of each other; Rapunzel could have been sleeping under a bed of leaves while the prince was walking by, and thus never noticed her. You decide.

The Elves and the Shoemaker

Summary

This is a story about a poor shoemaker who ran out of material from which to make shoes. Magically, new shoes appear in his shop overnight. This happens again and again. When the shoemaker and his wife stay awake all night to see what's up, they find two naked elves working hard. The shoemaker decides to make the elves clothes. The elves put on the clothes, and then are never seen again. But the shoemaker is left with good luck.

The Characters

The Shoemaker

An elderly, kindly man, having bad luck lately. His business isn't going well, through no fault of his own. He can't make shoes to sell because he can't afford material to make the shoes.

The Shoemaker's Wife

Also a kindly person. She helps the shoemaker sell shoes.

The Elves

Tiny beings with implied magical powers and fantastic shoemaking skills. It's unclear how they came to know about the shoemaker's problems. The elves wear no clothing.

The Customers

A small cast of characters who would like to buy shoes from the shoemaker, if only he had something to offer.

The Plot

As the story begins, the shoemaker has become poorer and poorer over the years. Now he only had enough leather to make one more pair of shoes.

He planned to do the best he could with the material at hand, and cut a pattern. When he got up in the morning, the shoes were finished—and perfect, too.

A customer walked into the shop and bought the shoes. With the money, the shoemaker purchased material for two more pairs of shoes. He cut patterns for those shoes, and went to sleep, planning on sewing the shoes in the morning.

In the morning, there were two more beautiful pairs of shoes made. The shoemaker sold the shoes at a great price. Now the shoemaker had money to buy material for four pairs of shoes.

Next morning, there were four finished pairs of shoes—and they were bought right away.

The process continued and in short order, the shoemaker became a wealthy man.

One evening the shoemaker and his wife decided to stay awake to see how this was happening. They saw two elves, hard at work. But the elves wore no clothes. As soon as the elves were finished they ran away.

So the shoemaker and his wife made the elves some clothes to thank them. The shoemaker was concerned that the elves were outside in the cold with no clothes. The shoemaker and his wife worked and day and made tiny shirts, pants, caps, coats and socks.

When the elves returned instead of cuttings for shoes they found clothes. They put on the clothes with delight and sung a song: "Now that we're boys so fine and neat/Why cobble more for others' feet?"

The elves never returned, but the shoemaker continued to prosper and had good luck in everything he did.

How to Tell the Story

Your child may be curious about what the shoes looked like. Probably not like Nikes, or velcro Stride Rites. But they might have been children's shoes!

Also it's possible that the shoemaker let the process continue for a few days or months before staying up to find out what was happening. Perhaps the shoemaker left out some cookies in the interim. One version of the fairy tale has the shoemaker staying up not long before Christmas, and leaving the clothes out on Christmas eve.

Add dialog between the shoemaker and his wife. You might also be inclined to mention the shoemaker's children—naturally, they're grown up and living in another village. Then there's the matter of the elves dancing about the shoemaker's shop: I imagine it could have been quite a scene.

You can also make up a lot about the elves. What do they look like? Where do they come from? What does the clothing the shoemaker and his wife made look like? Tiny socks, tiny shirts, tiny pants—children love to hear about miniturized things.

This isn't a story you have to worry about shortening; it passes quickly.

Manuscript Details

Length: Approx. 250 manuscript pages/51-70 stories

Illustrations: One for each story

Time to delivery: Eight months

Back to the main Adler & Robin Books Literary Agency page

About the Author

Bill Adler, Jr. is the president of Adler & Robin Books, Inc. a literary agency and book packaging company. He is the author of over a dozen books including Outwitting Squirrels: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed From Your Bird Feeder by Squirrels (Chicago Review Press), The Home Remodeler's Combat Manual (HarperCollins), The Great American Answer Book (Avon, with Beth Pratt-Dewey), and The Non-Smoker's Bill of Rights (William Morrow, with Steve Allen), Baby-English: A Dictionary for Interpreting the Secret Language of English (Pocket Books, with Karen Adler, age two), Outwitting Critters, (HarperCollins), and Outwitting the Neighbors (Fireside). Outwitting Critters was a Literary Guild selection.

Of all his books, Adler's favorite is Outwitting Squirrels, not just because it was a treat to write but because it became such a success even after twenty publishers turned the proposal down. While reviewing this book USA Today called Adler, "A trendspotter." The Wall Street Journal called the book "A masterpiece." The book was twice enthusiastically reviewed in The New York Times and The Washington Post. Outwitting Squirrels is not only a testament to the cunning and perseverance of squirrels, it is a testament to Bill Adler's creative insight into the book buiness. The book has gone into printing after printing, and now the number of copies sold is in six digits. Regardie's magazine had this to say about the book: "Adler still feeds the birds, but now he also squirrels away royalties." Here are what some reviewers have said about some of Adler's books:

Outwitting Critters

Adler tells engaging stories, many bordering on suburban legend. Outwitting Critters surfeits with interesting facts and horse-sense hints. —The Village Voice

Adler has the answers, and they are creative as well as nontoxic. —Chicago Tribune

He offers...comprehensive treatment of the subject, and provides recommendations that are grounded in common sense. —Library Journal

Quayle Hunting: The Dan Quayle Joke Book

The Adlers really should be ashamed trying to make a buck off the vice

president. —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Outwitting Squirrels

In light of his entertaining, instructional, and philosophical contribution to the understanding of and possible solutions to such a universal problem, we should make Bill Adler, Jr. an honorary New Hampshirite. —Monadnock Ledger

What the birdfeeders of America long have needed is a guru...I'm pleased to announce there's a new voice on the front lines of birdfeeding. His name is Bill Adler, Jr...Adler assembled his findings into a nifty volume entitled Outwitting Squirrels. —Minneapolis Star Tribune

Outwitting Squirrels...ingenious tricks to keep squirrels from eating all the seed when the feeders fail. —The Washington Post

Bill Adler, Jr., a writer in Washington, has just published a treatise titled, Outwitting Squirrels...[His stratagems are] particularly appealing. —The New York Times

A paperback sure to please. —St. Petersburg Times

At last! A book that addresses life's really important issue, or in any case, the issue most crucial to people who like to feed birds. —The Detriot Free Press

Adler still feeds the birds, but now he also squirrels away royalties.

—Regardie's

A masterpiece of squirrel stratagems. —The Wall Street Journal

An excellent book...both entertainingly witty and extremely helpful.

A must. —The Ottawa Citizen

I learned a lot from Bill Adler. —The Toronto Star

Impeccable Birdfeeding

Perspective makes this book different: Mr. Adler puts the needs of the hobbyist before those of the birds. —The Dallas Morning News

The advice he delivers is supremely practical, his style spare and straightforward and his sense of humor is enlivening throughout the book. This is an eminently readable book, perhaps the only one the amateur bird-feeding hobbyist needs on his shelf. —The Washington Post

Adler & Robin Books, Inc. specializes in nonfiction for adults. Approximately twenty-five percent of the company's work involves representing authors as a literary agency. Some of the company's agented and packaged projects include Make Your Bank Work for You (Consumer Reports Books), The Mole People (Chicago Review Press), The Way We Were: 1963, the Year Kennedy Was Shot (Carroll & Graf), The Woman's Guide to Yeast Infections (Pocket Books), Scout's Honor: Sexual Abuse in the Boy Scouts (Prima), and How to Be a Successful Fertility Patient (William Morrow and Company.) The company's emphasis ¾ and greatest success¾ is in creating and developing book projects in-house. As Adler puts it, "Other than writing books myself, there's nothing more pleasurable in business than coming up with a book idea, nurturing it and working hard to turn it into a book that people buy. I like to think of this as 'book inventing.'" Adler & Robin Books, Inc. employs a full-time staff of three book inventors.

Besides books, Adler's articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Sierra, Dossier, and other newspapers and magazines. The first publication he ever wrote for was the much overlooked quarterly, American Drycleaner.

During his free time Adler flies airplanes: a Mooney 201, Cessna Skyhawk, and Piper Warrior. He is also a licensed amateur radio operator, and is known by the call sign, N3JAV. He is an avid cross-country skier.

Bill Adler received his B.A. from Wesleyan University, where he majored in government and did graduate work in organic chemistry. He received his M.A. from Columbia University's School of International Affairs, specializing in Soviet foreign policy, a field that is now ancient history. In the early 1980s, Adler was a Congressional lobbyist on defense and foreign policy, and then a political consultant. His study on nuclear breeder reactors was published in The Congressional Record. He also served as a Member of the United States Delegation to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in 1978.

Adler is the son of Bill Adler, the New York literary agent.

He lives with his wife, Peggy Robin, also a multi-talented writer, and co-founder of Adler & Robin Books, Inc., in Washington, D.C. They have a daughter, Karen, whose first book, Baby-English, will be published in 1993 around Karen's third birthday. Adler is brushing up on his fairy tales because he is expecting a second child in May.

Back to the main Adler & Robin Books Literary Agency page

We have a great book about getting published and writing book proposals. Click here to find out more about The Successful Literary Agent's Guide to Getting Published.

FAQ on Book Publishing
Great Books About Writing and Getting Published
Read what top editors have to say about getting published
One way to help protect your rights as an author