Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for April

Little Jack Horner

The Little Disaster

My Pretty Maid

The Ploughboy in Luck

My Shadow

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,

And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.

He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;

And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed.

The funniest thing about him is the way he likes to grow—

Not at all like proper children, which is always very slow;

For he sometimes shoots up taller like an india-rubber ball,

And he sometimes gets so little that there's none of him at all.

He hasn't got a notion of how children ought to play,

And can only make a fool of me in every sort of way.

He stays so close beside me, he's a coward, you can see;

I'd think shame to stick to nursie as that shadow sticks to me!

One morning, very early, before the sun was up,

I rose and found the shining dew on every buttercup;

But my lazy little shadow, like an arrant sleepy-head,

Had stayed at home behind me and was fast asleep in bed.

	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

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.