Review by Ed Quillen
Local Lore – November 2007 – Colorado Central Magazine
Prunes and Rupe
by Linda Griffin
Illustrated by Judith Hunt
Published in 2007 by Filter Press
ISBN 0865410860
THIS SHORT TALE is categorized as a “read aloud picture book,” and that fits. It’s a tear-jerker about two Fairplay characters. One is Prunes the burro, named for his wrinkled face and honored with a memorial on Front Street where the pack-burro race starts. The other is his owner, Rupert Sherwood, an old prospector.
The best way to evaluate a book like this is to read it aloud to one of your own kids. Mine are way too old for that, and they haven’t blessed me with grandchildren yet, so I couldn’t perform that test.
Basically, it’s the story of a good-hearted town that adopted a burro who wandered down the streets and alleys every morning, begging for pancakes. The local households always set aside a few extra flapjacks for Prunes, who arrives at about the same time each morning.
Rupe Sherwood gets old and has to move to a lower altitude, Prunes gets feebler, and you can guess the rest of the story.
This isn’t sober history, since most if not all the townsfolk are invented characters. Prunes is described as a prospector’s burro, always wandering the hills with pack-saddle and gold pan. But since there’s a collar on his memorial, Prunes must have spent time in harness, doubtless pulling a mine tramcart, which gets no mention here. The town is something of a character in the book, yet it’s never named, and the time is in the indeterminate past.
But this is a charming story of kindness and consideration, of affection between man and beast, and kids are fascinated by donkeys, perhaps because they’re generally just the right size for children. Or maybe it’s because their bray seems to express a child’s dismissive attitude about order and authority.
The illustrations — they dominate every page — are imaginative, with unusual vantages, but also realistic. If you’ve got a youngster to read to, or one on your holiday gift list, this is worth a look.
It may inspire a field trip to the Prunes Memorial next to the Hand Hotel in Fairplay, and pique some curiosity about prospectors and their pack animals and the lore of Central Colorado.
And if that happens, I recommend getting Tales, Trails, and Tommyknockers, which has many Colorado tales written for reading to kids. It’s still in print, and it came out back when I could read it to my kids, who loved it. They’d have doubtlessly enjoyed this one, too.
