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

Jasmine Stone Van Dresser’s “The Little Pink Pig” follows a tiny pink pig with five spotted siblings who begs his mother to let him out onto the big road. When the milkman forgets to close the gate, the pig runs out, is rolled in the dust by a dog, found by a farmer who locks him in a pen. He squeezes through a hole in the fence, is tossed in the air by a cow, chased by a goose who nips his leg, and finally finds his way home. His mother explains each animal he met, teaches him to wait until she instructs him on the big road, washes the mud off him, and he is a pink pig once more.

The volume closes with L. Frank Baum’s “Juggerjook,” featuring Fuzzy Wuz, a young white rabbit who gets her mother’s permission to go walking with Chatter Chuk, a reckless red squirrel, as long as they stay away from the feared forest magician Juggerjook’s den. Chatter scoffs at the fear, convinces Fuzzy to peek at the den, where they see a cave surrounded by bleached animal bones. Terrified, they run away, then find carrots under a box propped on a peg. When Fuzzy eats the carrots, the peg falls and traps her under the box. Scared of Juggerjook’s wrath, Chatter runs home and hides. Mrs. Wuz searches all night for her daughter, finds Chatter the next morning, and forces him to lead her to the trap. She tries to move the box but cannot, so she makes Chatter gnaw through the wood with his sharp teeth. Just as he makes a hole big enough for Fuzzy to escape, a trapper and his son catch all three in a net. The boy, realizing the mother rabbit and squirrel were trying to save Fuzzy, begs his father to let the three creatures go.

VIII

The chapter opens on a quiet path where a man and his curly-haired son, Charlie, walk hand in hand after a profound act of kindness. The boy has just opened a net to free captured little creatures, and though they return home without a dinner to show for their walk, the father’s words—“a good deed is better than a good dinner”—settle the matter with gentle wisdom. A nearby rabbit named Chatter Chuk, snug once more in his burrow, vows never to venture near the dangerous Men again, while his mother, Fuzzy Wuz, reflects that humans are curious creatures who often act more wisely than one might credit them.

From this tender beginning the storytelling tumbles forward into a string of small adventures. A little gray kitten, lost far from home and knowing only the word “Mew,” wanders through a world that speaks in foreign tongues. The earthworm ignores her, the butterfly flits away, the robin chirps and departs, the big black dog barks her into a fright, and the red cow lows her over a fence into a flower-bed. Only when she encounters a smiling little girl does someone understand her at last, and the kitten is gathered up into loving arms, her wandering ended. A companion poem, “Pussy’s Wheels,” muses on what a fat, contented cat might be thinking, while another tale, “The Small Gray Mouse,” follows a frantic little creature racing East, West, North, and South to escape a kitten that grows so vain she shuts her eyes at the crucial moment—letting the mouse vanish up the chimney.

The mood then shifts to harvest abundance. In a corn-field where pumpkins gleam and shocks stand like wigwams, a little boy and girl prepare a Thanksgiving dinner for the Rabbit, the Turtle, and the sleepy Owl. They set a flat-topped pumpkin for a table, smaller pumpkins for chairs, parsley and cabbage for the Rabbit, a mushroom for the Turtle, and a piece of bread for the Owl. That night, riding home by moonlight, they look out from their window to see their forest friends gathered at the feast, the moon rising golden above them. A gentle poem called “Homes” follows, comparing the cozy burrows and coops of bunnies, hens, kittens, and puppies to the narrator’s own beloved kitchen, where Dinah cooks good things to eat.

Then comes a parade of jovial visitors. In “The Fine Good Show,” a boy and girl set off down the road and greet each animal they meet with cheerful politeness—the dog barking “Bow-wow!”, the cat meowing, the rooster crowing, the duck quacking, the curly-tailed pig grunting. Soon they add a friendly red cow to their procession and put on a fine show for astonished women in a carriage and three men in a wagon. At a store, the children spend a small silver piece to buy corn for the cow and pig, wheat for the rooster and duck, meat for the dog, milk for the cat, and great long sticks of candy for themselves. With full bellies, they put up the pasture bars and race home, shouting good-bys in every animal tongue.

The woodland charm continues in “Gay and Spy,” a rhyming tale of a cheerful little girl and her mischievous dog, who plunges into a brook to spoil a bird’s bath, chases a red squirrel he cannot possibly catch, and barks futilely at a rabbit safe inside a stone wall. Next, the Ballad of a Runaway Donkey recounts how a sturdy gray donkey named Barney gallops across meadow and mire, leading children, groom, coachman, and farmer on a wild chase, until at last he catches himself by running headlong into the swinging barn-yard gate. The coachman drags him roughly home, and Barney stands so meek in his stall that no one would believe he’d ever run away—though his meditations are already of the next escape.

The storytelling deepens with classic flavor. In “The Three Bears,” the fox Scrapefoot sneaks into the bears’ castle while they are away, samples the big chair, the middling chair, and the comfortable little chair (which breaks), drinks from the saucers, and falls asleep in the little white bed. When the bears return and discover him, they swing him from the window—but, miraculously, not a bone is broken. A California bear cub then narrates his own story: orphaned in the Sierras after his mother is roped by cruel ranchers, he is chained, sent to a butcher in San Francisco, and finally photographed atop a screen, where the photographer shakes a tambourine to make him turn his head at the click. The Brothers Grimm contribute “The Hare and the Hedgehog,” in which a clever hedgehog, helped by his wife stationed at the other end of a hedge, defeats a haughty hare in seventy-four races and wins a louis d’or. A Scottish verse tale, “The Wee Robin’s Christmas Song,” follows a robin who refuses the flattery of Pussy Cat, Hawk, Fox, and a shepherd boy to sing for the King, and is rewarded with the wee Wren as his bride.