Second Grade Read Aloud Banquet



Songs for November


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 23 Pinocchio Flies with a Pigeon to the Ocean from Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi How Napoleon Crossed the Alps from Fifty Famous Stories Retold by James Baldwin A Robber in the Old Orchard from The Burgess Bird Book for Children by Thornton Burgess The King of the Birds (Part 1 of 2) from The Boy Who Knew What the Birds Said by Padraic Colum A Spanish Hero from The Discovery of New Worlds by M. B. Synge The New Clothes Fail (Part 2 of 2) from Understood Betsy by Dorothy Canfield Fisher Saint Columba (Part 2 of 2) from Our Island Saints by Amy Steedman
We Make Sail Again from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis
The First Island from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis
Captain Smith Accused from Richard of Jamestown by James Otis
Mr. Crab and His Friends from Seaside and Wayside, Book One by Julia McNair Wright The Travelers and the Purse from The Aesop for Children by Milo Winter I Harvest My Grain from Robinson Crusoe Written Anew for Children by James Baldwin Munachar and Manachar from Nursery Tales from Many Lands by Eleanor L. and Ada M. Skinner Buster Bear Gives It All Away from The Adventures of Prickly Porky by Thornton Burgess At Home from The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
Bumble-Bee and Clover, Anonymous Little Blue Pigeon by Eugene Field   The Caterpillar, Anonymous The Little Green Orchard by Walter de la Mare Hark! Hark! The Lark! by William Shakespeare Dandelion by Nellie M. Garabrant
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The Aesop for Children  by Milo Winter

The Fox and the Goat

A Fox fell into a well, and though it was not very deep, he found that he could not get out again. After he had been in the well a long time, a thirsty Goat came by. The Goat thought the Fox had gone down to drink, and so he asked if the water was good.


[Illustration]

"The finest in the whole country," said the crafty Fox, "jump in and try it. There is more than enough for both of us."

The thirsty Goat immediately jumped in and began to drink. The Fox just as quickly jumped on the Goat's back and leaped from the tip of the Goat's horns out of the well.

The foolish Goat now saw what a plight he had got into, and begged the Fox to help him out. But the Fox was already on his way to the woods.

"If you had as much sense as you have beard, old fellow," he said as he ran, "you would have been more cautious about finding a way to get out again before you jumped in."

Look before you leap.