Books with author Jean Cooke

THE CHILD’S WORLD OF SHORT STORIESBYJEAN COOK ACOOKEBOOK PUBLISHING COMPANYINTRODUCTION Two hundred years ago there lived in Germany a storyteller who has made the whole world laugh with his fanciful and wildly exaggerated tales. His name was Baron Munchausen. It was not necessary for him to say, “This, of course, is not a true story,” for his stories were always so fantastic that even the dullest people recognized them as pure fun. Never were we in graver peril of forgetting the art of telling short stories, of losing their liberating influence, of dulling, benumbing our sense of beauty than at present. For modern education, pressed by economic needs, confronted with urgent wants, dominated by the scientific spirit of the age which exults in marvels of mechanical invention, is rapidly tending to extol efficiency as its exclusive pursuit, forgetting the eternal need of beauty in human life, if man is to be more than a human mechanism, unmindful that starvation of the soul is more fatal than starvation of the body. Storytelling is the language of childhood. Mother Goose is the child’s first “liberating god.” But with Mother Goose the process of liberation is only the beginning. Storytelling should be continued throughout the whole period of a child’s education. To facilitate the use of storytelling for a child’s education, “The Child’s World of Short Stories” has been compiled. Variations in taste and in temperament have prompted the inclusion of a wide variety of stories, not always classic in quality, that every “open sesame” to the great world of storytelling might be offered. It is hoped that by constant and so thoughtful a use of stories as this volume suggest there may result a liberating of the sense of beauty, an instilling of an abiding love of short stories, the interpreter of beauty, and, it may be, a freeing of the power of storytelling expression. THE CHILD’S WORLD OF SHORT STORIESBYJEAN COOKCOPYRIGHT2014BY ACOOKEBOOK PUBLISHING COMPANYINTRODUCTION Two hundred years ago there lived in Germany a storyteller who has made the whole world laugh with his fanciful and wildly exaggerated tales. His name was Baron Munchausen. It was not necessary for him to say, “This, of course, is not a true story,” for his stories were always so fantastic that even the dullest people recognized them as pure fun. Never were we in graver peril of forgetting the art of telling short stories, of losing their liberating influence, of dulling, benumbing our sense of beauty than at present. For modern education, pressed by economic needs, confronted with urgent wants, dominated by the scientific spirit of the age which exults in marvels of mechanical invention, is rapidly tending to extol efficiency as its exclusive pursuit, forgetting the eternal need of beauty in human life, if man is to be more than a human mechanism, unmindful that starvation of the soul is more fatal than starvation of the body. Storytelling is the language of childhood. Mother Goose is the child’s first “liberating god.” But with Mother Goose the process of liberation is only the beginning. Storytelling should be continued throughout the whole period of a child’s education. To facilitate the use of storytelling for a child’s education, “The Child’s World of Short Stories” has been compiled. Variations in taste and in temperament have prompted the inclusion of a wide variety of stories, not always classic in quality, that every “open sesame” to the great world of storytelling might be offered.It is hoped that by constant and so thoughtful a use of stories as this volume suggest