Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet

Songs for November


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 13 The Inn of the Red Craw-Fish from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi Sir Philip Sidney from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin An Old Friend in a New Home from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes from The Girl Who Sat by the Ashes by Padraic Colum Marcus Aurelius from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge If You Don't Like Conversation, Skip This Chapter (Part 1 of 3) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher Gideon and His Brave Three Hundred (Part 1 of 2) from Hurlbut's Story of the Bible by Jesse Lyman Hurlbut
Homes in Iceland (Part 2 of 3) from Viking Tales by Jennie Hall Holly Trees and Holly Bushes (Part 2 of 2) from Outdoor Visits by Edith M. Patch The Bundle of Sticks from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter I Find a Great Store of Things from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin Perseus and Andromeda from A Child's Book of Myths and Enchantment Tales by Margaret Evans Price Reddy Fox Is Very Miserable from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess The Castaway Story from The Sandman: His Ship Stories by Willliam J. Hopkins
Pippa's Song by Robert Browning
Windy Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson 		  Margery Brown by Kate Greenaway Jim Jay by Walter de la Mare Violets by John Moultrie Little Blue Pigeon by Eugene Field
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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.


[Illustration]

"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.