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 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 Two Goats

Two Goats, frisking gayly on the rocky steeps of a mountain valley, chanced to meet, one on each side of a deep chasm through which poured a mighty mountain torrent. The trunk of a fallen tree formed the only means of crossing the chasm, and on this not even two squirrels could have passed each other in safety. The narrow path would have made the bravest tremble. Not so our Goats. Their pride would not permit either to stand aside for the other.

One set her foot on the log. The other did likewise. In the middle they met horn to horn. Neither would give way, and so they both fell, to be swept away by the roaring torrent below.

It is better to yield than to come to misfortune through stubbornness.


[Illustration]