Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) Fun and Thought for Little Folk

In “Henny-Penny,” something whacks Henny-penny on the head as she pecks corn, convincing her the sky is falling. Off she goes to tell the king, gathering Cocky-locky, Ducky-daddles, Goosey-poosey, and Turkey-lurkey along the way. At last they meet Foxy-woxy, who leads them into a dark hole in his own cave. One by one he snaps off their heads with a “Hrumph!”—but when he only wounds Cocky-locky, the bird cries out and Henny-penny runs home, never delivering her terrible news.

Cecilia Farwell’s “Three Goats in the Ryefield” offers gentler comedy. A boy drives three goats along the road when the first spies a hole in a fence guarding a field of rye. They leap in; the boy chases them round and round until exhausted, sits, and cries. A dog tries, then a fox, both failing. At last a bee asks the matter, slips into the field, and buzzes in the first goat’s ear. Unable to see his tiny tormentor, the goat is stung and declares this a serious matter. The goats bolt back to the road, and the boy, dog, and fox agree the bee’s buzzing counted for more than all their barking.

“Teeny Tiny” is a tiny-scary tale: a teeny-tiny woman in a teeny-tiny house finds a teeny-tiny bone on a teeny-tiny stone and pockets it for soup. That night, a teeny-tiny voice from her cupboard cries “Give me my bone!”—first softly, then louder—until the woman pokes out her head and shouts, “Take it!”

“Song of the Pear Tree” builds layer by layer: branch, twig, nest, egg, bird, feather, bed, beautiful child, bound in ever-lengthening nesting clauses. “There is the Key of the Kingdom” plays the reverse, opening from a key into a kingdom, city, town, street, lane, yard, house, room, bed, basket, flowers, then folding inward.

Mary Howitt’s “Cock-Alu and Hen-Alie” is the longest moral tale in the chapter, with a rooster who crows and boasts far more than he performs. At four in the morning he wakes the parish to show devotion to his little wife; when Hen-alie chokes on a bean, he sets off to fetch water from the silver-spring in the Beech-wood, gathered while the dew is in it. Along the way he dawdles to chat with a snail (pocketing a silver trail), a wood-pigeon (a blue velvet ribbon), a wild-cat (green fire for his tail-feathers), a sheep-dog (who scolds him for delay), and a squirrel. By noon the spring is dry, trampled, felled, and dug; by evening Cock-Alu returns with only trinkets. A shabby drab-colored hen—the meanest in the yard, with no tail-feathers and long black legs—runs in silence to the spring, gathers twelve fresh drops in the evening dew, and slips them into Hen-alie’s beak. The bean is loosened and swallowed, Hen-alie recovers, and the shabby hen is rewarded with silk stockings and green fire, transformed into the handsomest queen-hen. The moral: those who boast most often achieve least.

The remaining pages are lighter still. Tommy and his sister take their new pony-cart out, gather a friend and a fat boy named Billie, and end their ride in a heap. Three kittens set off to see the world, get caught in the rain, find a sweet-milk puddle, and Jack frightens them home. Another trio of kittens are told to sleep, spy a mouse tail, dash for the door, and pull—what turns out to be something quite different. Teddy wishes he were an owl so he could sit up all night, scolds about it, and fairies make his awful wish come true pointedly. A nonsense rhyme from the Negro quarters declares the rain is done because the Jay-bird winked, the Hawk broke his jaw, and the Wren and the Thrush clackety-clack. Frederick Moxon’s “Timothy Trundle” celebrates a bouncingly fat lad of Topplety Town who rolls down a hill like a snowball and eventually turns up as a circus clown. Pictures by Culmer Barnes send a Bunny Police Officer warning a Dog off the third rail, an Owl scolding Mr. Woodpecker, the Bruin family reunited at the seashore, a Papa Mouse warning of dangers that work all too well, Roly-Poly riding a giraffe to the jungle, and Mother Goose demanding a transfer on a runaway trolley car. A small Arctic story, “Little Eski and the Polar Bear,” begins, and a final nonsense verse, “The Frog’s Fiasco” by D. K. Stevens, introduces a bog-dwelling frog who bills himself “Signor,” posts handbills, and invites the village to his one-song Song Recital for one shilling—a vain creature sure to come to comic grief.