Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for December


Bed in Summer

In winter I get up at night

And dress by yellow candle-light.

In summer, quite the other way,

I have to go to bed by day.


I have to go to bed and see

The birds still hopping on the tree,

Or hear the grown-up people's feet

Still going past me in the street.


And does it not seem hard to you,

When all the sky is clear and blue,

And I should like so much to play,

To have to go to bed by day?

  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 17 Pinocchio's Nose Grows from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi Pocahontas from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin Redwing and Yellow Wing from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess The Wisest Woman Comes to the King's Castle from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum The Armies of the North from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge Elizabeth Ann Fails in an Examination (Part 2 of 3) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher The Strong Man: How He Lived and How He Died from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Wineland the Good (Part 1 of 2) from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall Nan's Blue Spring Flower from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch The Lion and the Mouse from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter I Have a Great Fright from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin The Golden Touch from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price Granny Fox Catches Peter Rabbit from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess The Flight from The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
The Robin by Celia Thaxter Over the Hills and Far Away by Eugene Field   The Unseen Playmate by Robert Louis Stevenson Nod by Walter de la Mare Hie Away by Sir Walter Scott Don't Kill the Birds by Daniel Clement Colesworthy
First row Previous row          Next row Last row
The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Tortoise and the Ducks

The Tortoise, you know, carries his house on his back. No matter how hard he tries, he cannot leave home. They say that Jupiter punished him so, because he was such a lazy stay-at-home that he would not go to Jupiter's wedding, even when especially invited.

After many years, Tortoise began to wish he had gone to that wedding. When he saw how gaily the birds flew about and how the Hare and the Chipmunk and all the other animals ran nimbly by, always eager to see everything there was to be seen, the Tortoise felt very sad and discontented. He wanted to see the world too, and there he was with a house on his back and little short legs that could hardly drag him along.

One day he met a pair of Ducks and told them all his trouble.

"We can help you to see the world," said the Ducks. "Take hold of this stick with your teeth and we will carry you far up in the air where you can see the whole countryside. But keep quiet or you will be sorry."

The Tortoise was very glad indeed. He seized the stick firmly with his teeth, the two Ducks took hold of it one at each end, and away they sailed up toward the clouds.


[Illustration]

Just then a Crow flew by. He was very much astonished at the strange sight and cried:

"This must surely be the King of Tortoises!"

"Why certainly—" began the Tortoise.

But as he opened his mouth to say these foolish words he lost his hold on the stick, and down he fell to the ground, where he was dashed to pieces on a rock.

Foolish curiosity and vanity often lead to misfortune.