In The Silver Horn of Robin Hood, Donald Cooke weaves together many of the legends surrounding the figure of Robin Hood into a novel for young readers. His goal was to connect the unrelated vignettes into a seamless whole, but the episodic nature of Robin's fabled adventures works against him.

Though no doubt true to the original flavor of the legends, I found this novel a bit more cartoonish than I was expecting. Robin's always ordering up a sumptuous feast, the Sheriff is more a comic figure than a villain, suits o' Lincoln green just magically appear whenever they're needed, the Sheriff's blundering foresters never have the faintest hope of catching the band, and on and on. Though I grew up loving Cooke's Men of Sherwood, this collection was a vague disappointment. I think younger readers would enjoy it more. ( )

A retelling in novelistic form of the Robin Hood stories. This is fairly closely based on the traditional ballads/stories, but the sequel (Men of Sherwood) is more original and continues the adventures of Robin's band into King John's reign leading up to Magna Carta. In its day this book was fairly well-known --I have a notion it won an award --but I am surprised not to have found it in Stephen Knight's encyclopedic review of Robin Hood material. ( )