_Presentation._ These stories that are selected by the story teller as being particularly adapted to English teaching should be most carefully prepared and presented happily, compellingly, and in their exact, original form with almost no variation in subsequent telling so that they may present good models to the children.
_Repetition._ A story selected for its English value should have frequent repetitions that the children may become very familiar with it and gain the power to repeat it themselves, or at least learn certain parts of it, not as a task but naturally, inspirationally.
STORIES THAT HELP A CHILD TO VERBAL EXPRESSION
There was once a little Lady Woodpecker--such a trim, tidy little Lady Woodpecker--who wore always a natty red bonnet, and a white apron and who lived in a hole in a big Pine Tree. Her house was cozy and comfortable, all lined with moss and wool, and protected by a little brown bark door so that it was cool in the summer time and warm when the winter winds blew.
But the little Lady Woodpecker was a selfish bird and she never, _never_ asked any other birds to come and visit with her in her house in the Pine Tree.
In the next tree to the little Lady Woodpecker lived a Fluffy Sparrow. His nest was loosely built and untidy and it rested insecurely in a fork of a tree so that the wind blew it this way and that way. This was because all sparrows are poor nest builders and it was not the Fluffy Sparrow’s fault at all. One day there was an unusually heavy storm and down from the tree blew the nest. So the Sparrow had now no home.
Then the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered beside the little brown bark door above the little Lady Woodpecker and said:
“Oh, little Lady Woodpecker with the red bonnet, have pity on me and take me into your house, for the rain falls and I am very, very cold.”
But the little Lady Woodpecker tapped with her bill on the wall of her house and answered:
“I can’t let you in to-day, Fluffy Sparrow. I am cooking juniper berries for a batch of pies. Come again some other time and perhaps I will let you in.”
So the Fluffy Sparrow hopped away and the rain made him very, very cold.
The next day the Fluffy Sparrow flew and hopped and twittered again beside the little brown bark door of the little Lady Woodpecker and said: