Story: Chieko and Akemi’s Adventures

Chapter 1: Do Good?

Chieko was determined to do good. As she walked into the fifth graders’ classroom on a hot summer day, her gaze swept her thirty-one classmates, and she felt deep down to her toes that today she would find someone to do a good deed for. 

The day before she had read a terrible story of a girl who had no friends and who was bullied by her fellow students because of her freckles. In a desperate attempt to be accepted, the girl had undergone cosmetic surgery to have the freckles removed, but due to an allergic reaction to the anesthetic she had fallen ill. Chieko understood the heroine’s feelings completely. Why, she herself would do anything to be accepted.

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Story: Jamie’s Friends

"Just think! You’re going to have a whole new class of kids whom you can befriend.” It was the first day of the new school year, and Jamie’s mother was driving him to school.

“It doesn’t work that way,” said Jamie, grumbling. “Nobody wants to be friends with me. Everyone thinks I’m weird.” Jamie wanted to have friends. He wanted to be invited to sleepovers, camping trips, and cookouts with the other boys. But Jamie’s legs were stiffened by arthritis, and he was forced to wear leg braces, which gave him an awkward limp.

“You are not so different from the other kids. Your legs might be different, but that doesn’t make you as a person weird. The kids just don’t know that—and you have to show them. If you’ll reach out and be kind and friendly to the other kids, I know you’ll make some friends. But you have to do your part. You can’t expect the other kids to do it all. It takes two to be friends.”

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Audio: The Tailor’s Secret

The Tailor’s Secret

Narration: Our story begins a long time ago in the streets of Helsinki in Finland. It was winter, and as usual Helsinki was very cold, with only a few hours of sunlight each day. Tradesmen worked at their crafts in cozy workshops by glowing fires. Women left the warmth of their kitchens only for hurried trips to the shops.

Boy: Look, Mommy, at that old man over there. He’s looking in the garbage can.

Mother: Yes, my dear. That’s poor old Klaus. His is a sad story. He was once the finest tailor in town. But now with his tattered clothes and tangled white beard you can hardly recognize him.

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Story: A Night in Midwinter

High above London’s sullen smog, the freezing North Wind whipped the moisture-filled clouds into those lovely flakes we know as snow.

Along with its blankets of snow, the North Wind blew in a rotund figure mounted upon a sleigh, who was convulsively chirruping to a dozen reindeer that pranced as if they were pulling their master through the winter glades of Lapland instead of the clouds of the firmament.

"Ho, ho, ho!" he said and doubled up with a cough. I, his elfin companion and servant, pounded his back until his breath came easier.

"That'll do. Thank you, Ralph," he said with a wheeze. I was glad I had taken extra care to learn Finnish at the Elves Intergalactic Preparatory School, for Claus was difficult to understand at any time, but his Finnish was more intelligible than his English.

"Thank God we don't always need to use these earthly bodies!" he gasped and looked at me enviously. "You, Ralph, look slender, lithe—positively elfish, sir! Your disguise fits you like a second skin. What have you to say about that?"

"That I'm glad the general idea was achieved," I replied. I liked the small size and agility of my "costume."

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Story: Max and the Plan to Catch a Guardian Angel

The December sky was a beautiful blue as Maximilian Talley walked up the driveway to his house. The air was brisk, the sun was shining, and winter vacation was just around the corner! Life was good.

He carried his school pack over his right shoulder and held a bag of empty juice cans in his left hand. He grasped the door handle and pulled the door open a few inches. Max whirled around and his eyes narrowed as he looked up and down the road in front of his house. No one was there. Nothing moved but the tips of the trees and the shadows they cast on the road.

Missed him again, thought Max, and he opened his front door—all the way this time—and disappeared inside.

Once inside, Max tiptoed quietly up the stairs and paused in front of his bedroom door.

Maybe, just maybe, if he wasn’t trailing behind me, then he could be in my room—behind the curtains or in the closet, hiding.

He carefully laid down his school pack and his bag of empty juice cans, then took a deep breath.

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Story: An Old-fashioned Christmas

“Helen! Helen!”

That’s me—my name is Helen—and that would be my mother calling. I jumped out of bed when I heard her voice, for that meant that I had overslept. Some of the chores, like milking the cows and feeding the hens, weren’t things you could do only when you had a mind to.

I shook my head and looked doubtfully at the sun that had snuck up on me so suddenly, and while I scrubbed my face my mind was a-whirring and a-clicking like an adding machine, trying to see if I could fit in all the chores before the rest of my siblings awoke.

Well, I managed. Mother always said I had a way of managing—I was proud of that.

When I heard Mother call, “Come and get it!” I was getting up off the milking stool and rubbing the kinks out of my fingers. I stowed the stool where it belonged, and carrying the pail of milk, I left the stable.

Our house was built on a five-acre stretch of land within sight of the Roanoke River, and on clear days I could see all the way to the Blue Ridge Mountains. I loved the smell of pines and the smell of the grass in the summer. I took a deep breath, savoring the morning air as I walked toward our sturdily built cabin. At the moment breakfast was uppermost on my mind.

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