animals

This is a story about a very unusual boy, and an even more unusual monkey. The boy was out of the ordinary as boys go, because he didn’t like chocolate. No, not at all. Not even one little bit. And I must say, I’ve never met a boy like that. Not in my entire life.

Once upon a time there was an old man, an old woman, and a little boy. One morning the old woman made some gingerbread in the shape of a man. She added icing for his hair and clothes, and little blobs of dough for his nose and eyes. When she put him in the oven to bake, she said to the little boy, "You watch the gingerbread man while your grandfather and I go out to work in the garden." So the old man and the old woman went out and began to dig potatoes, and left the little boy to tend the oven. And he started to day dream, and didn’t watch it all of the time.

Este cuento se llama El zorro y la cigüeña, una fábula tradicional escrita por Esopo, y traducida y leída en español por Lorena Romero. Esta es una adaptación y grabación de LibraryCall. Hace mucho tiempo, cuando los animales vivían en armonía, el zorro y la cigüeña eran los mejores amigos. Pasaron muchos momentos maravillosos juntos. Algunos días, salían a explorar la naturaleza, descubriendo tesoros escondidos en el bosque. Otras veces, se juntaban en la noche y cantaban melodías alegres.

This story is called The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse by Aesop. This is a LibraryCall recording. A Town Mouse once visited a relative who lived in the country. For lunch, the Country Mouse served wheat stalks, roots, and acorns, with a dash of cold water to drink. The Town Mouse ate very sparingly, nibbling a little of this and a little of that. By her manner, she made it quite clear that she ate the simple food only to be polite. After the meal, the cousins had a long talk, or rather, the Town Mouse talked all about her glamorous life in the city while the Country Mouse listened.

A certain man had a donkey, which had carried the corn sacks to the mill loyally for many a long year; but his strength was going, and he was growing more and more unfit for work. His master began to wonder if it was worth his while by keeping this old donkey much longer. The donkey, seeing that no good wind was blowing, ran away and set out on the road to Bremen. “There,” he thought, “I can surely be a town musician.” When he had walked some distance, he found a dog lying on the road, gasping like one who had run until he was tired.

It was Shrove Tuesday, otherwise known as pancake day. The City Mayor was sitting up in his bed eating his breakfast – a big pile of pancakes with black caviar and sour cream, washed down with champagne. As he took another silver-spoonful of caviar, his mobile phone rang. How he hated it when people called him while he was still at breakfast! He was about to throw his phone out of the window when he noticed that the call was coming from the Chief Of Police. “Oh dear,” thought the Mayor. “He probably wants to miss our card game.

Este cuento se llama El patito feo, escrito por Hans Christian Andersen y narrado por Lorena Romero. Esta es una adaptación y grabación de LibraryCall. El campo era tan hermoso durante el verano. El trigo era amarillo y la avena todavía estaba verde. Desde el alto del campo hasta el agua crecían plantas grandes con hojas enormes, y ahí había hecho una pata su nido. Estaba empollando sus patitos, pero la pata empezó a perder la paciencia.

Este cuento se llama El Ratón Pérez escrito por Luis Coloma, y adaptado, traducido, y leído por Lorena Romero y Madeline Walton Hadlock. Esta es una grabación de LibraryCall. Hace muchos años vivió el rey Buby. Era un gran amigo de los niños pobres y también protector de los ratones.

The Greedy Lion and Clever Little Rabbit, a tale from the ancient Indian collection of stories called The Panchatantra. A long time ago in India, there was a jungle full of beautiful plants and trees, flowers and fruit, and many animals lived happily there. Deer, monkeys, rabbits and wild boar in this jungle, there was also a fierce Lion who had protected the other animals in the past. But over the years had become greedy and mean. He had begun to attack the other animals, even when he wasn't hungry.

One day, the Lord Buddha called all the animals to a meeting. He told them that he had decided to pick the 13 most faithful animals, and reward each of them with their own year. As soon as the animals heard this, they began to quarrel among themselves about who should have the honour of the first year, the second, the third, and so on. The Buddha decided to settle this squabble with a contest. He gathered the 13 animals on the bank of a gushing river, and told them that they must swim across to the other side.