THE IMPORTANCE OF FAIRY TALES

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.” 
― Albert Einstein

          

 The little red hen and the fox 

One day the Big Black Fox said to his mother, “I am hungry. What is there in the house to eat?”

“Not a bite or a sip, “said Mother Fox.

“Well then, said the Big Black Fox, “ put a big kettle of water on the boil. This morning I shall go after the Little Red Hen.”

    So off he started with a sack slung over his shoulder, in which he planned to bring back the Little Red Hen.

Now the Little Red Hen had gone out to hunt some large, juicy worms for breakfast, and she had left the door of her little  house open. So when the Big Black Fox came sneaking up with his sack over his shoulder, he slipped right into the house and hid.

“Aha!” said he. :I won’t be long before the Little Red Hen comes back. Then what a delicious breakfast we shall have, Mother Fox and I.”

   Soon  the Little Red Hen came back with seven juicy worms for her breakfast. She stepped inside the house and stopped short. She knew immediately that something was wrong. But, before she could think what it was wrong. But, before she could think what it was, the Big Black Fox jumped out from his hiding place.

   Quicker than a wink the Little Red Hen dropped her seven juicy worms and fluttered up to the high mantel above her fireplace.

  “Come down!” cried the Big Black Fox.

But the Little Red Hen was too smart for that. “Not I , “she said. “I am safer up here.”

I know a way to fix that, “said the Fox, and he started to run around and around and around in a circle.

The poor Little Red Hen watched him, wondering what he was up to. And the longer she watched him circling, the dizzier she got. Finally she was so dizzy that she troppled right off the mantel.

     Chuckling wickedly, the Big Black Fox stuffed her into his sack and started for home. It was a long walk and a hot day, and the Little Red Hen was a heavy load, so the Big Black Fox had to stop often to rest. Once he stopped a moment too long, and he fell sound asleep.

     The Little Red Hen heard the fox begin to snore.

“This is my chance, “She thought.

She reached into her apron pocket,where she kept her scissors and needle and thread. Then snip, snip, she cut a hole in the sack big enough to wriggle through.

  “Now for a big stone,” she said to herself.

  She found one at last, just her own size.

This she rolled into the sack: then she sewed up the slit she had cut.

     Then off she went, lickety split, faster than she had ever gone before. She hurried back home. Once inside she closed the door behind her, locked it, and double locked it.

And she locked the back door too.

“Oh dear, the water must be all boiled away by now, :he said. “I must hurry home.”

When he had taken just a few steps, though, he noticed how heavy his sack was.

  “What a plump, juicy little hen she must be,” he thought, chuckling.

      When he got home, his mother was watching anxiously for him.

“You’ve been gone so long.” She complained, “that I’ve had to keep it from all boiling away. Sure enough, there was a great cloud of steam coming from the kettle. Good, said the Big Black Fox when he saw this. Now you hold  the cover off while I dump the Little Red Hen into the pot. But instead  of the Little Red Hen, the steaming  kettle , throwing boiling water all over the Big Black Fox and his mother. That was enough for those two bad foxes. Never again did they bother the Little Red Hen in her little house in the woods.