In this episode we'll be reading two fairy tales from Hans Christian Andersen: The Elderbush and The Old House. Andersen wrote many novels, plays, poems, and travelogues but the Danish author is certainly best known for his fairy tales. Early reviews of his fairy tales called them too informal and dialog heavy but now we can appreciate this is the very aspect of his style that makes his tales so timeless and enjoyable for children and adults alike.

In this episode we'll be reading the short story, “The Lees of Happiness,” by F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story was originally published in The Chicago Sunday Tribune in 1920 – the same year as Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise. The author stated that he feared the story “would be accused perhaps of being a mere piece of sentimentality, but,” as he saw it, “it was a great deal more.”

In this episode we'll be reading the story of the Race for the Silver Skates from Hans Brinker; or, the Silver Skates: A Story of Life in Holland by Mary Mapes Dodge. The novel, about a Dutch boy, Hans Brinker, and his sister, Gretel, was published by the American author in 1865 – before she had visited the Netherlands. Dodge based her stories of Dutch culture and landscapes on stories told to her by Dutch friends and extensive research on on the country.