Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for August

Alone

A very old woman
Lives in yon house.
The squeak of the cricket,
The stir of the mouse,
Are all she knows
Of the earth and us.

Once she was young,
Would dance and play,
Like many another
Young popinjay;
And run to her mother
At dusk of day.

And colours bright
She delighted in;
The fiddle to hear,
And to lift her chin,
And sing as small
As a twittering wren.

But age apace
Comes at last to all;
And a lone house filled
With the cricket's call;
And the scampering mouse
In the hollow wall.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Week 10	The Puppets Recognize Their Brother Pinocchio from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi	Three Men of Gotham from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin	Jenny Has a Good Word for Some Sparrows from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess	What the Geese Talked Of from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum	The Tragedy of Nero from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge	Betsy Goes to School (Part 2 of 2) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher	Saint Patrick (Part 1 of 2) from Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman
	King Harald's Wedding from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall	A Bluebird's Song (Part 3 of 3) from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch	The Kid and the Wolf from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter	I Carry Some Things Ashore from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin	Atalanta and Hippomenes from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price	Unc' Billy Possum Tells Jimmy Skunk a Secret from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess	The Pirate Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
	The Sea Princess, Anonymous	Violets by Dinah Maria Mulock		Little Billee by William Makepeace Thackeray	Up and Down by Walter de la Mare	March by Celia Thaxter	The Lamb by William Blake

The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter

The Lion and the Mouse

A Lion lay asleep in the forest, his great head resting on his paws. A timid little Mouse came upon him unexpectedly, and in her fright and haste to get away, ran across the Lion's nose. Roused from his nap, the Lion laid his huge paw angrily on the tiny creature to kill her.

"Spare me!" begged the poor Mouse. "Please let me go and some day I will surely repay you."

The Lion was much amused to think that a Mouse could ever help him. But he was generous and finally let the Mouse go.

Some days later, while stalking his prey in the forest, the Lion was caught in the toils of a hunter's net. Unable to free himself, he filled the forest with his angry roaring. The Mouse knew the voice and quickly found the Lion struggling in the net. Running to one of the great ropes that bound him, she gnawed it until it parted, and soon the Lion was free.

"You laughed when I said I would repay you," said the Mouse. "Now you see that even a Mouse can help a Lion."

A kindness is never wasted.