The Highwayman (Oxford Children's Classics)

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I must admit I was worried at first when she said her feelings for her boss were complicated and opaque. Dougan was all alone in the world, with no love or kindness, until little Farah came along and tended his switch wounded hands. In this children's book, the author of The Gruffalo punctures the highwayman's gentlemanly reputation. Captain Charles Johnson celebrated 'A General History of the Pirates' (1724) is the most famous book about pirates ever written. Now, it wasn't perfect because I simply could not wrap my head around the fact that she didn't recognize him.

I imagined a beautiful Bess and a devastatingly, dangerously handsome highway man, but apart from that the illustrations seem quite reminiscent of the imagery evoked by the poem and reflect the story well. then the difference between a despicable and reprehensible low life like yourself and a gentleman highwayman who was well-dressed, well-mannered, an excellent horseman and who used threats rather than actual violence is wider than the gap between your ears, which trust me is pretty wide. flashbacks are hit or miss for me but i was instantly taken by the way these two trusted each other. When Farah revealed she went to Newgate prison everyday for the whole seven years that Dougan was there and brought him food because she made a promise that she would not let him starve again.The things she's survived and the secrets she's kept would have made a lower woman than her wither away. In Alfred Noyes's thrilling poem, charged with drama and tension, we ride with the highwayman and recoil from the terrible fate that befalls him and his sweetheart Bess, the landlord's daughter.

I knew there was something behind those eyes, beneath those gloves, that would give back to me what I’ve been missing all these years. So the Hero takes a Fall, literally falling off his horse as he is shot down "like a dog on the highway" and it's very sad, you almost feel his humiliation and degradation and want a more noble death for him. He is so passionate without even trying to be-instead of doing everything to carve ice around his heart. I want to read more in the series because there are conflicting reviews, but otherwise this one fell kind of flat for me. But nothing about the mysterious Dorian Blackwell or his dark reputation is what it seems, and the more Farah gets to know him and the men he trusts the most, the more she senses there is more to her new husband than meets the eye, and that he is hiding something from her.Alfred Noyes's famous poem still has the power to thrill us as we read the story of the highwayman and his doomed love for Bess, the landlord's black-eyed daughter. I like how he never makes any excuse for who he is and what he has done and learning of the type of abuse he suffered was heart-rending. Then cover this with a layer of black crayon and draw your ghostly picture by scratching through the black layer with a stick or the end of a paint brush. But his spirited new bride refuses to let him forget the one and only condition of their marriage, their every encounter thawing his heart little by little, and stirring parts of him he’s believed were long gone.