Text and photographs describe the life of a nine-year-old girl and her family in the small Russian city of Suzdal.
Russian Girl: Life in an Old Russian Town
Europe
Materials from Europe
#1 (One)
When Six, a pink armadillo with nine green siblings, brags that he is “#1” in everything, his family expresses a different opinion.
The Impudent Rooster
Using his amazing swallowing ability, a rooster foils the evil plans of a greedy nobleman and brings back riches to his poor master.
Stone Men
Grandma tells Arnie how a poor peddler saved a village from being destroyed by soldiers with the help of the stone men he always made on his journeys.
Noah and the Devil: A Legend of Noah’s Ark from Romania
In this Romanian folk version of the Noah story, getting the animals to march, two by two, onto the ark is the easy part–it was persuading his wife to come aboard that gave Noah a headache. And when he snapped, “Oh, you devil, come in!,” that gave the Devil himself just the invitation he needed. Once aboard, in the shape of a mouse, the Devil gnawed a hole in the ark, to sink it beneath the flood.
Dark Night
when he wanders into the forest at night, Felix, terrified by the ferocious animals he sees, finds refuge in an unusual underground house.
Pascual and the Kitchen Angels
Pascual, a boy blessed by angels at his birth, receives divine help when the Franciscan monks make him their cook.
Christopher: The Holy Giant
As Reprobus carries a child across a river one stormy night, the boy gets heavier and heavier until Reprobus feels he is carrying the world on his shoulders–thus goes the legend of the name Christ-bearer, or Christopher.
I Am the King!
After his mother gives him a crown, a little boy decides to do only what he wants to do, until he is sent to his room.
Galileo’s Treasure Box
While Galileo sleeps, his young daughter Virginia, later known as Maria Celeste, explores his study and discovers some of the tools he uses in his scientific experiments.