Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December

A Diamond or a Coal?

A diamond or a coal?
A diamond, if you please:
Who cares about a clumsy coal
Beneath the summer trees?

A diamond or a coal?
A coal, sir, if you please:
One comes to care about the coal
What time the waters freeze.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Week 15	The Assassins Pursue Pinocchio from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi	Sir Humphrey Gilbert from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin	Old Clothes and Old Houses from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess	The Matchless Maiden Loses Her Golden Slipper (Part 1 of 2) from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum	Christians to the Lions from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge	If You Don't Like Conversation, Skip This Chapter (Part 3 of 3) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher	Jephthah's Rash Promise and What Came from It from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
	Eric the Red from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall	Don's Yellow Spring Flower from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch	The Ass and His Driver from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter	I Go A-Hunting from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin	Romulus and Remus from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price	Old Granny Fox Investigates from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess	The Little Sol Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
	April Rain by Robert Loveman	All Things Bright and Beautiful by Cecil Frances Alexander		Hark! Hark! The Lark! by William Shakespeare	The Universe by Walter de la Mare	Answer to a Child's Question by Samuel Taylor Coleridge	A Sudden Shower by James Whitcomb Riley

The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter

The Fox and the Crow

One bright morning as the Fox was following his sharp nose through the wood in search of a bite to eat, he saw a Crow on the limb of a tree overhead. This was by no means the first Crow the Fox had ever seen. What caught his attention this time and made him stop for a second look, was that the lucky Crow held a bit of cheese in her beak.

"No need to search any farther," thought sly Master Fox. "Here is a dainty bite for my breakfast."

Up he trotted to the foot of the tree in which the Crow was sitting, and looking up admiringly, he cried, "Good-morning, beautiful creature!"

The Crow, her head cocked on one side, watched the Fox suspiciously. But she kept her beak tightly closed on the cheese and did not return his greeting.

"What a charming creature she is!" said the Fox. "How her feathers shine! What a beautiful form and what splendid wings! Such a wonderful Bird should have a very lovely voice, since everything else about her is so perfect. Could she sing just one song, I know I should hail her Queen of Birds."

Listening to these flattering words, the Crow forgot all her suspicion, and also her breakfast. She wanted very much to be called Queen of Birds.

So she opened her beak wide to utter her loudest caw, and down fell the cheese straight into the Fox's open mouth.

"Thank you," said Master Fox sweetly, as he walked off. "Though it is cracked, you have a voice sure enough. But where are your wits?"

The flatterer lives at the expense of those who will listen to him.