Look inside ... For the Children's Hour by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey A choice collection of stories for the preschool child, carefully selected, adapted, and arranged by two veteran kindergarten teachers. Includes nature stories, holiday stories, fairy tales and fables, as well as stories of home life. Emphasis is placed on fanciful tales for their value in the training of the imagination and on cumulative tales for developing a child's sense of humor and appealing to his instinctive love of rhyme and jingle.  Ages 4-7 464 pages $15.95

THE STONE BABY

THE stone baby was lonesome. He had looked forth over the city from his little round window on the side of the great building where the architect said he must forever stay, and had seen the homes of the other little ones.

Then he said to himself: "When it was summer I could see the children at their windows and in the street, but now they keep well inside. From here I cannot see the big boys and the girls skate and coast, even.

[45] "I'd like to see the green grass in the square and the boys sailing boats on the pond.

"Dear me, I believe it's snowing. I don't mind a cold nose and snow-powdered hair, but I can't see even the children's houses if it gets very thick."

Just then there was a "chirp, chirp" in the air, and something flew right under the stone baby's chin. It was a little sparrow coming for refuge from the storm. "Chirp, chirp," and another came, and another.

"Thank you, baby, for a little corner from the storm," said the sparrows.

"Oh, you're very welcome," said the stone child.

They nestled closer and closer.

"Isn't it pleasant to be of some use in the world!" said the stone baby—for stone babies are so much more serious than flesh and blood children, "and they wouldn't do this for a real, walking and running child."

Hundreds of additional titles available for online reading when you join Gateway to the Classics