(b) The Straw, the Coal, and the Bean is most likely to stir the child’s impulse to draw. Leslie Brooke’s illustration in The House in the Wood might aid a child who wanted to put some fun into his representation. Birdie and Lena or Fundevogel, is a story that naturally would seek illustration. Three crayon-sketches, one of a rosebush and a rose, a second of a church and a steeple, and a third of a pond and a duck, would be enough to suggest the tale.
(c) The Story of The Wolf and Seven Kids, if told with the proper emphasis on the climax of triumph and conclusion of joy, would lead the child to react with a water-color sketch of the dance of the Goat and her Kids about the well. For here you have all the elements needed for a simple picture—the sky, the full moon, the hill-top, the well, and the animals dancing in a ring. After finishing their sketches the children would enjoy comparing them with the illustration of Der Wolf und die Sieben Geislein in Das Deutsche Bilderbuech, and perhaps they might try making a second sketch. This same tale would afford the children a chance to compose a simple tune and a simple song, such as the well-taught kindergarten child to-day knows. Such are songs which express a single theme and a single mood; as, The Muffin Man and To the Great Brown House; or There was a Small Boy with a Toot and Dapple Gray in St. Nicholas Songs. In this tale of The Wolf and Seven Kids, the conclusion impresses a single mood of joy and the single theme of freedom because the Wolf is dead. The child could produce a very simple song of perhaps two lines, such as,—
Let’s sing and
dance! Hurrah, hurrah!
The Wolf is dead!
Hurrah!