to tell his
mother about it and his mother said, "You want to go for another
walk?" and he said, "Yes, but not where the wild animals are." I
said, "Do you want to go to Central Park?" and he said, "Yes." You
see he got fooled! He didn't know about the wild animals.

JOINT STORY BY SIX-YEAR-OLD CLASS

I like it when the boy and the girl look at the sky. They look at
the trees and they are sleepy. It is dark outside. It is night and
the sky is dark blue. And it is kind of whitish and the trees are
next to the blue sky. The bright evening star is out. The star is
so far up in the sky that you can hardly see it. The children are
looking at the sky before they go to bed and they are praying to
God. They have their nightgowns on. The bed is all nice so they
couldn't have just got up. The clothes are hanging on the bed. They
sleep in their own bed together. When they go to bed they have
their door closed.

"The Leaf Story" and "The Wind Story" I have incorporated with my
stories, though they are almost entirely the work of children. In both
cases the organization is beyond the children. But the content and the
phraseology bear their unmistakable imprint. The same is true of "The
Sea Gull."

Because of the pattern, the play aspect of language, I believe in
written stories even for very little ones. If we loved our language
better and played with its sound in our ordinary speech, perhaps stories
for two- and three-year-olds would not be needed. But as it is, we
need to present them with something more intentional, more thought out
than is possible with most of us in a story told. If the patterns of
our ideas or of our speech are to have charm, if they are to fit the
occasion with nicety, if they are to flow easily and are to be
continuous enough to be comprehended by little children, they will need
careful attention,--attention that cannot be given under the emergency
of telling a story, not, at least, by the uninspired of us. Inevitably,
with our utilitarian tendencies, we shall be drawn off to an undue
regard of the content to the neglect of the expression. And yet, for
very little children, there is unquestionably something lost by the
formality and fixity of a written story. A story told has more
spontaneity, allows more leeway to include the chance happenings or
remarks of the children; it can be more intimately personal, more
adapted to the part