Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country

Two children on a Georgia plantation discover that magic lives just beyond the edge of the familiar. Sweetest Susan and Buster John, under the watchful eye of their nurse Drusilla, encounter the diminutive Mr. Thimblefinger one lazy afternoon and receive an extraordinary invitation: to visit his 'queer country,' a hidden realm where the ordinary rules of childhood no longer apply. Harris, better known for his Uncle Remus tales, weaves the same deep knowledge of Southern folklore into this gentler, more whimsical collection. The stories pulse with the strange logic of dreams, where talking animals and mysterious old women move through the children's world as naturally as fireflies on a summer evening. There's an eerie tenderness here, a sense that childhood itself is a kind of magic hour that must be protected. For readers who grew up on Harris's Brer Rabbit stories or who love the strange, lyrical worlds of turn-of-the-century children's literature, this collection offers a quieter but equally enchanting portal into the imagination of the Old South.