Legendary Pine Barrens

Book: Legendary Pine Barrens

Author: Paul Evans Pedersen Jr.

Illustrations: Jodi Weiss Pedersen

Website: http://www.plexuspublishing.com/Books/Legendary-Pine-Barrens.shtml

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGFJPXY

Publisher: Plexus Publishing, Inc

Price: $14.95

Pages: 179

A good storyteller can bring their audience into another world, allowing an escape from the “real” world for a time. Paul, with his book Legendary Pine Barrens, does just that. His storytelling causes the reader to escape from their world and drift down into the pages of his book, and the magical world of South Jersey myths and legends.

Legendary Pine Barrens is a collection of short stories, songs, and legends that grow out of the sands of the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Paul Evans Pedersen Jr., in his storytelling, makes the reader feel as if they are sitting around a campfire in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey as he tells his tales, such as “The Truth about the Jersey Devil,” which tells the real story about how the Jersey Devil was born:

So, my friend, you think you’ve heard all the versions of all the stories

and know all of the twists, turns, nooks, and crannies there are concerning the

Pine Barren’s most notable resident, the Jersey Devil? Well, there’s one more that you

need to learn about. The real one. The true one. (15)

My favorite story, “Chakitty-Chikts,” explains the “Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch” sound heard late at night. We might think they are bugs living in the trees singing to one another, but they are not. As Paul tells us, they are trolls, the size of your thumb, brought over by the Vikings when they traveled to this land before Christopher Columbus. These very tiny trolls were a snack for the Vikings, but one night, the trolls were able to escape their inevitable death and ran south to the Pine Barrens. Now the sound we hear at night in South Jersey, Cha-kitty-Chik, is the sound of the trolls snoring in the trees.

Throughout the book, and on the cover, are wonderfully drawn illustrations by Jodi Weiss Pedersen. The cover of the book portrays the Jersey Devil, the author Paul, and the troll from “Cha-kitty-Chikts” who are sitting around a South Jersey tavern where Paul tells his stories.

With each one of these stories, Paul puts his twist on an old tale, or maybe we are hearing the “true story” for the first time. I was first drawn to Legendary Pine Barrens by the cover. Once I started reading the stories, I gripped the page so tightly in my hands because I was not only reading about “The Dead Bus”, “The Hangin Tree”, or the “Magic of the Silver Queen,” but I was inside the book, sitting at the tavern with Paul as he told me the stories of his Legendary Pine Barrens.

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