Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet



Songs for April

Little Jack Horner



The Little Disaster



My Pretty Maid



The Ploughboy in Luck




The Sugar-Plum Tree

Have you ever heard of the Sugar-Plum Tree?

'Tis a marvel of great renown!

It blooms on the shore of the Lollipop sea

In the garden of Shut-Eye Town;

The fruit that it bears is so wondrously sweet

(As those who have tasted it say)

That good little children have only to eat

Of that fruit to be happy next day.


When you've got to the tree, you would have a hard time

To capture the fruit which I sing;

The tree is so tall that no person could climb

To the boughs where the sugar-plums swing!

But up in that tree sits a chocolate cat,

And a gingerbread dog prowls below—

And this is the way you contrive to get at

Those sugar-plums tempting you so:


You say but the word to that gingerbread dog

And he barks with such terrible zest

That the chocolate cat is at once all agog,

As her swelling proportions attest.

And the chocolate cat goes cavorting around

From this leafy limb unto that,

And the sugar-plums tumble, of course, to the ground—

Hurrah for that chocolate cat!


There are marshmallows, gumdrops, and peppermint canes,

With stripings of scarlet or gold,

And you carry away of the treasure that rains

As much as your apron can hold!

So come, little child, cuddle closer to me

In your dainty white nightcap and gown,

And I'll rock you away to that Sugar-Plum Tree

In the garden of Shut-Eye Town.


  Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Week 12 Pinocchio Is Taken In by the Fox and the Cat from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi The Miller of the Dee from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin Peter Learns Something He Hadn't Guessed from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess How Maid-alone Ceased Being a Goose-herd from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum The Destruction of Pompeii from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge What Grade Is Betsy? (Part 2 of 2) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher How a Woman Won a Great Victory from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Homes in Iceland (Part 1 of 3) from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall Red Oak and Live Oak (Part 1 of 2) from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch The Fox and the Grapes from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter I Have a Strange Visitor from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin Jason and the Golden Fleece from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price What Reddy Fox Saw and Did from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess The Cape Horn Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
The Sing-Away Bird by Lucy Larcom Dandelions by Helen Gray Cone   Ready for Duty by Anna B. Warner Wanderers by Walter de la Mare March by Lucy Larcom Seven Times One by Jean Ingelow
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Frogs and the Ox

An Ox came down to a reedy pool to drink. As he splashed heavily into the water, he crushed a young Frog into the mud. The old Frog soon missed the little one and asked his brothers and sisters what had become of him.

"A great big  monster," said one of them, "stepped on little brother with one of his huge feet!"

"Big, was he!" said the old Frog, puffing herself up. "Was he as big as this?"


[Illustration]

"Oh, much  bigger!" they cried.

The Frog puffed up still more. "He could not have been bigger than this," she said. But the little Frogs all declared that the monster was much, much  bigger and the old Frog kept puffing herself out more and more until, all at once, she burst.

Do not attempt the impossible.