Virginia Lee Burton as illustrator, Anne Malcolmson as editor, and Grace Castagnetta as arranger of the original old English music have joined forces to produce the definitive modern version of the Song of Robin Hood. The verve and distinction of this meticulously produced 128-page volume make it one of the bookmaking triumphs of 1947.

Anne Malcolmson had edited a vigorous, to-be-sung treatment of the text, and, borrowing through old song books, has rescued the original music for fifteen of the ballads. Grace Castagnetta has set it down in modern notation. Virginia Lee Burton worked on the drawings for over three years, spending two years in research and technique and the final year working from five in the morning until five in the evening on the actual art work. She has produced a work of art, whose painstaking detail and exuberant sense of life merit comparison with the miniatures which adorn the great "Books of Hours" of the fifteenth century. The medieval craftsmen who carved the miracle of Chartres, the monastic scribes who made of an illuminated manuscript a gleaming world of men and beasts and saints and gracious foliage, would have honored the illustrator of Song of Robin Hood as one of their own.

The text, the music, and the illustrations combine to form a harmonious whole. The book will appeal to every type of reader, it offers such delight to the eye and the ear. There is no better way to introduce children to the legend of Robin Hood or to renew your own acquaintance with it, and it is especially recommended as a gift, for here, without cavil, is one of the really beautiful books of the year.

From the dust jacket