Animals Books

A STORY FOR NORAH   This is a Tale about a tail—a tail that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin. He had a brother called Twinkleberry, and a great many cousins: they lived in a wood at the edge of a lake.   In the middle of the lake there is an island covered with trees and nut bushes; and amongst those trees stands a hollow oak-tree, which is the house of an owl who is... more...

CHAPTER I.THE FAMILY OF RATS. My very earliest recollection is of running about in a shed adjoining a large warehouse, somewhere in the neighbourhood of Poplar, and close to the River Thames, which thereabouts is certainly no silver stream. A merry life we led of it in that shed, my seven brothers and I! It was a sort of palace of rubbish, a mansion of odds and ends, where rats might frolic and... more...

SOMEBODY IS EXPECTED On May Day the feathered folk in Pleasant Valley began to stop, look and listen. They were expecting somebody. "Have you seen him?" Rusty Wren asked Jolly Robin. Jolly Robin said that he hadn't; but he added that he was on the lookout. "Have you heard his song?" little Mr. Chippy inquired eagerly of Mr. Blackbird. "No!" that dusky rascal replied.... more...

CHAPTER 1 To Baree, for many days after he was born, the world was a vast gloomy cavern. During these first days of his life his home was in the heart of a great windfall where Gray Wolf, his blind mother, had found a safe nest for his babyhood, and to which Kazan, her mate, came only now and then, his eyes gleaming like strange balls of greenish fire in the darkness. It was Kazan's eyes that gave... more...

CHAPTER I. Little Dot had lost her way in the bush. She knew it, and was very frightened. She was too frightened in fact to cry, but stood in the middle of a little dry, bare space, looking around her at the scraggy growths of prickly shrubs that had torn her little dress to rags, scratched her bare legs and feet till they bled, and pricked her hands and arms as she had pushed madly through the bushes,... more...

I. Granny Fox Gives Reddy a Scare Reddy Fox lived with Granny Fox. You see, Reddy was one of a large family, so large that Mother Fox had hard work to feed so many hungry little mouths and so she had let Reddy go to live with old Granny Fox. Granny Fox was the wisest, slyest, smartest fox in all the country round, and now that Reddy had grown so big, she thought it about time that he began to learn the... more...

THE GRANDMOTHER OF THE DOLLS. Once upon a time there lived on a plantation, in the very middle of Middle Georgia, a little girl and a little boy and their negro nurse. The little girl’s name was Sweetest Susan. That was the name her mother gave her when she was a baby, and she was so good-tempered that everybody continued to call her Sweetest Susan when she grew older. She was seven years old. The... more...

Never stop upon your way,Just to fool around and play.Learn to quickly go to school;Never, never break this rule. But, oh dear me. One morning when Little Jack Rabbit met the Squirrel Brothers, Featherhead, the naughty gray squirrel, asked him to stop and play a game of marbles. “Where are your marbles?” asked the little rabbit. “Here they are,” answered Featherhead, taking some red and yellow... more...

A PLEASANT HOME Now, Rusty Wren had found—and shown to his wife—a hollow apple tree and a hole in a fence-rail, either of which he thought would make a pleasant place in which to live. But since the little couple were house wrens, Rusty’s wife said she thought that they oughtn’t to be so far from the farmhouse. “Why not build our nest behind one of the shutters?” she suggested. But Rusty... more...

TO THE CHILDREN Dear Little Friends: I want to introduce the farmyard people to you, and to have you call upon them and become better acquainted as soon as you can. Some of them are working for us, and we surely should know them. Perhaps, too, some of us are working for them, since that is the way in this delightful world of ours, and one of the happiest parts of life is helping and being helped. It is... more...