Sir Gibbie

by George MacDonald
Edited by Kathryn Lindskoog
Illustrated by Patrick Wynne
Republished Summer, 2001
P&R Publishing

"Sir Gibbie had been out of print for about thirty years when it was abridged by Elizabeth Yates, and it was her version I gobbled down with delight. She said she had shortened the book by almost half. I knew that the complete SIR GIBBIE was a favorite of C.S. Lewis, and so next I managed to get a copy of the full 1914 Everyman edition, which is probably the one he read. To my dismay, I discovered that along with the unreadable old Northern Scots dialect, Yates had cut out much of MacDonald's Christian teaching ("digression from the story") and a key part of the plot. So I immersed myself in the book and adapted it from scratch, faithfully condensing each of the 62 chapters, to make it as readable for today's American children and adults as it was for British children and adults a century ago."

Quoted from Kathryn's article, "Adapting the Classics: Purists, Pirates, and Literary Liposuction"

For some interesting connections between George MacDonald's character Gibbie, and Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, see the article Mark Twain and George MacDonald: The Salty and the Sweet