“We Was Robbed!” | A Gift from Chapter XIV of Miss Missy’s School

The last community Aubrey and Gilbert needed to contact was that of the turkeys. For the most part, Aubrey got along fine with the turkeys. Gil, on the other hand, had time and again to restrain his natural instinct to go after them. For their part, the turkeys didn’t make the best neighbors. For generations, they had harbored resentment toward people and all things associated with people.

Parliamentary Procedure? What’s That? | A Gift from the Epilogue of Miss Missy’s School

Have you ever been with a group of people and you couldn’t get a word in edgewise? Maybe you were planning a birthday party for a friend in the neighborhood but the new kid on the block wouldn’t stop talking. Maybe your family was talking about where to go on vacation and your little sister, who reminds you a lot of Bebe, wouldn’t keep quiet, so you tried talking louder and louder and everyone ended up yelling.

“It’s Parliamentary, Sir” | A Gift from Chapter XII of Miss Missy’s School

“WELL, WOULD YOU look at this! Hey John! Come and look at this!” Marica shouted as she opened the door to the shuttered back porch. “Look, John! It’s a meeting of the canine minds— the ca-minds!” she said pointing at the gathering of the Big Dogs— including Tiger the Cat— who were situated among piles of books and other reference materials.

In Fairyland

From the Kid Blog at Miss Missy’s School where Marica talks with kids (and their grownups) about reading and writing…I’d like introduce Andrew Lang (1844-1912), author of In Fairyland. More than anyone, Lang was responsible for making fairy-tales popular with children, and grownups as well, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He’s most famous for a series of 12 Fairy Books which were titled using color names. The first of these was The Blue Fairy Book (1889)…

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.