Fairy-tales

The Water-babies: A Fairy Tale for Land-babies by Reverend Charles Kingsley, first published in 1868. It’s the story of a little boy named Tom who lived in middle of the 1800s. Tom is a chimney sweep–he crawls into the chimneys of rich peoples’ houses to clean out the soot. It’s a dirty job, and he is always tired and hungry. One day

Animal Stories

Now, as you know, most dogs don’t usually wear reading glasses and Homburg hats unless their people dress them up (as Beatrix Potter did her pets). Most animals don’t write in shorthand like Missy, or read British detective stories as Rocky likes to do. And most animals don’t talk in real life! To give human characteristics to nonhuman creatures and things is to anthropomorphize them.

Writers Take Note!

If you haven’t yet read about John Bartlett in the “Epilogue: Old Things and Ways Explained” to Miss Missy’s School Book I: A Pack of Farm Dogs Starts a School, a commonplace book is simply a notebook where you write down sayings, quotations, Bible passages, titles of books you want to read