The rubric, applied
Classic stories and fairy tales
The longer stories and the old fairy tales are scored on the same eight things. Each mark is from 0 to 10. The number on a story is those eight added, divided by eight, and multiplied by ten. These are this desk’s marks. They are not a study, and they are not a command to hide a story.
How they differ
The twelve longer stories average 63. The eight fairy tales average 75. The gap is not that fairy tales are for children and the novels are serious. Several of the novels were written for the young. The gap is what each kind of story has time to do.
A novel stays with one person long enough to watch a change. Elizabeth Bennet admits she was wrong. Scrooge is shown his grave and still has a day left. Jane Eyre leaves the house she wants because the marriage is a lie. A fairy tale is a few pages and a rule. Stay on the path. Do not open the door. Do not eat the house. Build with brick. The rule is clear. The person usually is not. Red Riding Hood does not grow up inside the story. She breaks the rule and is eaten, or she is cut out of the wolf. That is the whole arc.
On courage the two shelves are close. A child who pushes a witch into an oven, and a boy who says he would rather go to hell than turn Jim in, are both risking something. On conscience, on neighbors and the law, and on what you leave, the novels sit higher. A fairy tale rarely has a town, a law, or a child who will still be there in twenty years. Beauty and the Beast is the exception. She takes her father’s place and comes back when she said she would, so it scores with the novels. Jack and the Beanstalk is the other end. The story cheers a theft. Clever is not one of the eight measures.
Limits are the fairy tale’s own ground, and even there the shelf does not win by much. Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and the three pigs are about appetite and shortcuts. Jack rewards the wanting. Bluebeard is the uncomfortable one. The murdered wives are the crime. The old telling spends more of its anger on the woman who looked. A tale can be old and still fail a measure. Cinderella, already on the longer list, sits in the middle for the same reason a lot of these do: the work is real, and the prize is a court instead of a house.
| Measure | Novels and longer stories | Fairy tales |
|---|---|---|
| Work | 6.2 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| Home | 6.4 / 10 | 7.1 / 10 |
| Conscience | 5.9 / 10 | 6.4 / 10 |
| Courage | 6.4 / 10 | 7.9 / 10 |
| Neighbors and the law | 6.4 / 10 | 6.9 / 10 |
| Limits | 5.8 / 10 | 8 / 10 |
| Truth | 7.4 / 10 | 7.8 / 10 |
| What you leave | 5.7 / 10 | 7.6 / 10 |
| The whole shelf | 63 / 100 | 75 / 100 |
Industry is the name on a review. The words in this table are the same eight things, in the plain names.
The longer stories
1843
A Christmas Carol
85/100
Hand it on. A man is allowed to change, and a child's house is the test.
A rich man is shown the grave he is earning, and the clerk's house he has been starving.
Industry
8/10
The office is real work. Money that feeds no house fails the measure.
Household
9/10
The Cratchit table and the nephew's dinner are the life Scrooge refused.
Piety
9/10
The ghosts will not let him call his life a private matter.
Courage
7/10
He looks at his own grave and does not look away.
Republic
8/10
He owes his clerk, and he owes the poor of the city.
Temperance
8/10
Greed is named. The feast comes after the change, not instead of it.
Truth
9/10
He has been lying to himself. The story will not join the lie.
Stewardship
10/10
Tiny Tim is the future. The story is about what a man leaves.
Ebenezer Scrooge keeps the books and keeps nothing else. The story does not ask you to despise work. It asks what the work is for. Bob Cratchit's house, with too little food and a sick child, is the answer Scrooge has been refusing.
Then do this. Read the last stave. Then feed someone who is not obliged to thank you.
1813
Pride and Prejudice
70/100
A marriage is the plot, and a bad marriage has a bill.
A young woman refuses a rich man, and both of them have to admit what they got wrong.
Industry
6/10
The work of an estate is in the background. The story is not about a craft.
Household
9/10
Marriage is the whole question, and Wickham's charm is not allowed to be free.
Piety
5/10
The clergyman is a joke. Conscience in Elizabeth and Darcy is not.
Courage
7/10
She refuses money. He swallows his pride in writing and in person.
Republic
7/10
Rank is real, and a neighborhood still has an opinion that matters.
Temperance
7/10
Wickham's appetite is the part that costs the youngest sister.
Truth
8/10
The first judgment is wrong. The letter corrects it. She changes her mind.
Stewardship
7/10
An entailed house and five daughters. The future of the women is the stake.
Elizabeth Bennet will not marry a man she cannot respect, even when the money would save her family. That is the part to keep. Fitzwilliam Darcy will not stay the man who insulted her. That is the other part.
Then do this. Name one opinion you are sure of about someone in your house. Ask whether you have earned it.
Ancient
The Odyssey
90/100
The point is the return, not the monsters.
A husband spends ten years getting home. His wife holds the house. His son goes looking.
Industry
9/10
He builds a raft and a bed. The swineherd's work is honored.
Household
9/10
Penelope keeps the house for twenty years. The son has a father to wait for.
Piety
9/10
The gods are treated as real. A guest under your roof is a duty, not a mood.
Courage
9/10
He goes through the monsters because the house is on the other side.
Republic
9/10
The hall has been stolen. He puts it back under a law, not a whim.
Temperance
9/10
The lotus, the wine, and Circe are traps. He falls and he gets up. The suitors never do.
Truth
9/10
He lies to stay alive. The story loves the trick. It also loves the moment he is known.
Stewardship
9/10
The bed, the son, and the hall are handed back, not spent.
The adventures are the part people quote. The story is a man trying to get back to a wife who would not take a substitute, and a son who has had to grow up without him. The suitors eat another man's house and call it their right. The ending says they are wrong.
Then do this. Come home when you said you would. If you cannot, say so before the hour passes.
1908
Anne of Green Gables
79/100
An orphan is given a name, a place, and work. Keep it.
A farm couple ask for a boy to help with the work and are sent a girl. They keep her.
Industry
8/10
Green Gables is a farm. Anne is expected to become useful, and she does.
Household
9/10
Matthew and Marilla are not her parents by blood. They become her house anyway.
Piety
7/10
Church, prayer, and a real apology are ordinary parts of the town.
Courage
7/10
She stays, she tells the truth after she fails, and she tries again.
Republic
8/10
Avonlea notices. A neighbor's opinion can be narrow, and it can also be kind.
Temperance
7/10
Vanity, the dyed hair and the puffed sleeves, is corrected without crushing her.
Truth
8/10
Her imagination is a gift until it becomes a lie. She learns the difference.
Stewardship
9/10
She is given a future, and when Marilla needs her, she does not spend it only on herself.
Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert wanted a boy who could work. They got Anne Shirley, who talks too much and has nowhere else to go. They keep her. That decision is the book.
Then do this. Give a child in your house one job that the house actually needs, and notice when it is done.
1847
Jane Eyre
78/100
Conscience costs her the house she wants. She leaves anyway.
A governess will not be kept as a mistress, and she will not live on a lie.
Industry
8/10
She earns her bread. She will not be dressed and kept.
Household
7/10
She refuses a marriage that already has a wife. The hidden wife is the bill.
Piety
8/10
At the altar, and again in the garden, conscience stops her.
Courage
9/10
She leaves comfort twice, with nowhere safe to go.
Republic
6/10
The story is a few houses, not a town. Duty is personal and still real.
Temperance
8/10
She wants him. Wanting him is not allowed to erase the wife upstairs.
Truth
9/10
Rochester's lie is the crime. She will not share it.
Stewardship
7/10
She comes back with her own name and her own money, and the child is taught.
Jane Eyre is poor, plain, and clear. Edward Rochester offers her love and a house, and he has not told her he already has a wife. She leaves. The book does not treat this as a tragic loss of passion. It treats it as the minimum a person owes the truth.
Then do this. If you owe someone the truth, say it before you ask them for anything else.
1911
The Secret Garden
73/100
Neglect is the illness. Work in a garden, and a father who returns, are the cure.
A sour girl and a boy who will not leave his bed bring a locked garden, and a father, back to life.
Industry
7/10
The garden is work. Martha and Dickon already know how to do it.
Household
8/10
A shut-up house opens. A father comes back to his son.
Piety
6/10
The 'magic' is attention and growth. Awe is real. A creed is not spelled out.
Courage
7/10
Mary goes outside. Colin stands up. Both were used to refusing.
Republic
6/10
A manor and a cottage. The children cross the line the adults keep.
Temperance
8/10
Spoiling is the sickness. Appetite stops being the ruler.
Truth
7/10
The locked garden and the hidden boy are secrets that have to be opened.
Stewardship
9/10
A dead mother's garden is kept, then given to the children who will tend it.
Mary Lennox arrives rude and useless. Colin Craven has been allowed to believe he cannot live. The garden has been locked since his mother died. None of that is fixed by a speech. It is fixed by going outside, by seeds, and by a father who finally walks into the room.
Then do this. Put something in the ground, or in a pot. Let a child be the one who waters it.
1950
A traitor can be bought back. The price is paid by someone else, on purpose.
Four children walk through a wardrobe into a winter that a traitor and a lion will have to answer for.
Industry
5/10
A war is the reason they are in the house. The book is not about a trade.
Household
8/10
Four brothers and sisters have to act like a house. The old professor keeps his.
Piety
9/10
Aslan is not a costume. A law deeper than the witch's winter is the center.
Courage
8/10
Lucy tells the truth when no one believes her. Peter fights. Edmund comes back.
Republic
8/10
A kingdom is restored under a law, and a traitor is not shrugged off.
Temperance
8/10
The Turkish delight is how a child is bought. The sweet is the trap.
Truth
8/10
Lucy is right and doubted. Edmund lies, and the lie is not charming.
Stewardship
8/10
They are given a throne to keep, and they give Narnia back when they leave.
Edmund Pevensie sells his brother and sisters for a box of sweets and a promise from a woman who freezes the country. The story does not stop at catching him. Someone else pays what the law requires, and Edmund is taken back.
Then do this. If someone in the house has done wrong, say what it cost. Then say whether they are still yours.
1678
The Pilgrim's Progress
91/100
Every easy path is a trap. The book says so in plain pictures.
A man leaves his city with a burden on his back and will not take the shortcuts.
Industry
9/10
The work is the walking. It is not a trade, and it does not pretend to be.
Household
9/10
He leaves his family to start. Later they are on the road too. The leaving is not nothing.
Piety
10/10
The book is conscience, start to finish. The burden comes off at the cross.
Courage
9/10
The valley and the fight are there so he can refuse to turn around.
Republic
9/10
Vanity Fair sells everything, including the truth. The story judges the fair.
Temperance
9/10
Every shortcut is appetite with a polite name.
Truth
9/10
The false guides are named. A smooth talker is not a friend.
Stewardship
9/10
The book is a map for the next person on the same road.
Christian, in John Bunyan's book, lives in the City of Destruction and cannot get the burden off his back by staying comfortable. He leaves. People on the road offer him easier routes. Each one costs more than the hard road would have.
Then do this. Name one easy path you have been taking. Say out loud what it is avoiding.
1719
Robinson Crusoe
91/100
The work is the glory. The lack of a house to go back to is the hole.
A restless son is wrecked alone and has to make a life with his hands. He is not good at needing people.
Industry
10/10
He makes tools, bread, a shelter, and a calendar. The work is the story.
Household
9/10
He left his father's house. No marriage matters. Friday is kept as a servant.
Piety
9/10
After the wreck he reads the Bible and treats the survival as a judgment, not luck.
Courage
9/10
He stays. He builds. He does not wait to be rescued before he starts.
Republic
9/10
One man becomes a small king. He learns duty, and he does not learn equality.
Temperance
9/10
The early wandering is judged. The island forces a limit he would not choose.
Truth
9/10
The journal includes the failures, the fear, and the bad ideas.
Stewardship
9/10
He keeps the island, then leaves it. The thing handed on is the lesson, not a household.
Robinson Crusoe is a book about making. Shelter, food, pots, a boat he builds too far from the water. A house can learn from the competence. It should not learn the rest without an argument.
Then do this. Make one thing your house uses. Do not do it alone if someone next to you could learn it.
1884
The conscience is real and badly taught. The last chapters waste the point. Read it awake.
A boy helps a man escape slavery and thinks he is damning himself to do it.
Industry
5/10
The raft is travel, not a craft. Work is incidental.
Household
4/10
Pap is a danger. The widow's house is a mixed mercy. Jim is trying to reach a stolen family.
Piety
5/10
Huck believes helping Jim will send him to hell. He chooses Jim. The town's religion is often a show.
Courage
9/10
He says he will go to hell rather than turn Jim in. That is the bravest sentence in the book.
Republic
7/10
A feud, a fraud king, and a law that calls a man property. The boy and the man step outside it.
Temperance
5/10
The con men are appetite, and the book mocks them. The violence is still thick.
Truth
8/10
Huck lies to survive. The book tells the truth about what he was taught. The ending plays with Jim's freedom.
Stewardship
6/10
Jim's freedom is what should be handed on. The last game treats it as a boy's plot.
Huck Finn has been told that a black man is property and that helping him run is a sin. On the river he decides he would rather be damned than send Jim back. The book wants you to see that the boy's training was the lie, and the choice was the truth.
Then do this. Read the chapter where he writes the letter and tears it up. Stop there and talk.
1883
Treasure Island
56/100
Courage is real. The treasure is not a good inheritance, and the rum is not a joke.
A boy, a map, and a crew that will kill for a chest. The charming man is the danger.
Industry
7/10
A voyage takes seamanship. The map is not magic. Someone still has to sail.
Household
5/10
Jim's father is weak and then gone. His mother is briefly brave. There is no house at the end.
Piety
4/10
Men fear dying. Almost nobody reveres anything.
Courage
8/10
Jim does the dangerous thing when the adults are past doing it.
Republic
6/10
A ship has a law. Mutiny is the attempt to replace it with whoever is strongest.
Temperance
4/10
Rum runs the crew. The book often enjoys the swagger.
Truth
6/10
Long John Silver lies, and the book likes him for it. Jim at least admits when he was afraid.
Stewardship
5/10
The chest is dug up and spent. Nothing is planted for the next people.
Jim Hawkins is brave. That part is clean. He is also a boy on a ship where the most likable man is a murderer, and the prize at the end is coins that nobody earned. The story knows Silver is dangerous. It still has too much fun with him.
Then do this. Ask which person in the story you would actually trust with a key. Say why.
1697
Cinderella
90/100
The work and the test are worth keeping. The prize is a court, which is thinner than a house.
A girl does the work of a house that hates her. A shoe is a test, not a personality.
Industry
9/10
She does the housework the others will not do. The work is why she is who she is.
Household
9/10
A dead mother, a cruel stepmother, sisters as a warning. The marriage is a rescue.
Piety
9/10
The godmother is wonder. The older telling still carries a mother's care, not a sermon.
Courage
9/10
She goes to the ball against the house that keeps her down.
Republic
9/10
The reward is a court, not a town. Rank is the prize.
Temperance
9/10
Midnight is a limit, and she keeps it.
Truth
9/10
The shoe fits one person. A claim is tested instead of announced.
Stewardship
9/10
In the older telling she forgives the sisters. A house is gained. It is not built.
This is the old tale, not a studio picture. Cinderella is the one who works. Her name in the story is an insult for the ash she sleeps in. The ball is not the moral. The moral is that the house has been using her, and a true claim can be tested.
Then do this. Notice who does the unnoticed work in your house. Thank that person before the day ends.
1776
Common Sense
91/100
Plain words, written to be read aloud. The name stayed off the first printing because the charge was treason.
Thomas Paine, Philadelphia. A king is not a father, and the colonies should separate.
Industry
9/10
A short argument, built to be used, not admired on a shelf.
Household
9/10
The king's claim to be a father is the thing he takes apart.
Piety
9/10
He appeals to reason and to nature. A creed is not the engine.
Courage
9/10
He says the unsayable, and he does not sign it, because signing could hang him.
Republic
10/10
The whole pamphlet is the question of who a people may answer to.
Temperance
9/10
The anger is aimed. It is not a binge.
Truth
9/10
He writes so a crowd can follow him. Some of the heat is hotter than the proof.
Stewardship
9/10
It was made to be passed from hand to hand and read to people who could not buy it.
Paine wrote it so a kitchen could hear it. That is the measure. A king, he says, is not a parent, and a continent does not need one across an ocean.
Then do this. Read the opening pages out loud to someone in the house. Stop when they can say, in their own words, what he thinks a king is.
1776
The American Crisis
91/100
Written to be read to men who were about to cross a river in the dark.
Thomas Paine, December 1776. These are the times that try men's souls.
Industry
9/10
It is a page for a camp, not a treatise. The work is the sentence.
Household
9/10
Home is what the summer soldier goes back to. The piece does not sit at a table.
Piety
9/10
Soul is the word he uses. The test is whether a man stays when it costs.
Courage
10/10
He names the man who shrinks, and he says it to soldiers.
Republic
9/10
A country is what you do not desert in December.
Temperance
9/10
Panic is the appetite he is writing against.
Truth
9/10
The sunshine patriot is a true name for a real desertion.
Stewardship
9/10
Washington had it read to the troops. It was meant to be kept for the worst night.
The first Crisis paper opens on the soul, not on tactics. A summer soldier and a sunshine patriot will leave when the weather turns. Paine is talking to men who are cold and losing.
Then do this. Read the first paragraph. Ask who, in your own week, stays only while it is easy.
1776
A people stating why they are leaving a king. The sheet was heard in a yard, not kept as a private letter.
Adopted July 4. About two hundred Dunlap sheets were sent out to be read in public.
Industry
9/10
A committee did the labor, and the bill of grievances is specific work.
Household
9/10
Posterity is named. It is not a story about one house.
Piety
9/10
Nature's God and the Creator are in the sentence. A soul is allowed. A church is not established.
Courage
10/10
To sign it, if they lost, was a hanging offense.
Republic
10/10
The document is the republic question said in public.
Temperance
9/10
The tone is an indictment, controlled. It does not gloat.
Truth
9/10
The rights are stated plainly. Congress cut the passage on the slave trade, and the country went on holding people as property. That omission is part of the score.
Stewardship
9/10
It was handed to a people, and it did not free the people already in chains. Later generations used the promise against that fact.
John Dunlap printed it overnight. Congress ordered the sheets sent to the assemblies and the army. John Nixon read it in the State House yard on July 8. The army heard it in New York on July 9. Few houses owned a copy. A town could hear it.
Then do this. Read the opening aloud. Then say, out loud, who in 1776 was not included in the word men.
1776
A small sheet, openly on a side, read aloud at the tavern because a child did not buy it.
Benjamin Towne, Philadelphia. The first paper to print the Declaration in full, July 6.
Industry
9/10
A printer's daily labor, on a press that could be seized.
Household
9/10
The reader is a town, not a family at a table.
Piety
9/10
News, not a creed.
Courage
9/10
Printing the Declaration in full was not a neutral act.
Republic
9/10
It put the public paper on the side of the break.
Temperance
9/10
A paper, not a spectacle. Still a partisan sheet.
Truth
9/10
It printed the text. It did not pretend to have no side.
Stewardship
9/10
Towns copied one another. One printing became the next town's news.
Towne's Evening Post carried the full Declaration on July 6, two days after Congress adopted it. The run was small. The hearing was not. A literate man stood up in a public room and read.
Then do this. When you next read a paper, say which side it is on before you argue with the facts.
1775
The Massachusetts Spy
90/100
The early fights, told so a town would stay angry. Sensation is part of the method.
Isaiah Thomas. Sharp, pictorial, and openly against the British.
Industry
9/10
He moved a press and kept printing. That is work under pressure.
Household
9/10
The unit is the outrage, not a house.
Piety
9/10
No reverence required. The picture is the point.
Courage
9/10
He printed what the occupation did not want printed.
Republic
9/10
A people is being told who the enemy is.
Temperance
9/10
The graphic telling is there to heat the reader. That is an appetite.
Truth
9/10
The side is true about itself. The heat outruns the care.
Stewardship
9/10
Anger is easy to hand on. Judgment is harder.
Thomas had already hauled the press out of Boston. The Spy told the first fights in pictures and in a voice that wanted the town hot. A paper can be brave and still be a goad.
Then do this. If a picture makes you angry in one look, wait one day before you repeat it.
1764
The Connecticut Courant
90/100
The war, carried to a town that was not the battlefield.
Hartford. An inland paper that still ran when occupation shut the ports.
Industry
9/10
A paper kept on a regular press, week after week, is a trade.
Household
9/10
It arrived in houses that were not in Philadelphia or Boston.
Piety
9/10
A civic sheet, not a catechism.
Courage
9/10
Printing through a war, away from the army, is a quieter nerve.
Republic
9/10
An inland town still owed the argument.
Temperance
9/10
Less heat than the Spy. Still a side.
Truth
9/10
It copied, and it reported. Copying was how truth traveled, and how error did.
Stewardship
9/10
When the port papers stopped, this one was still there to be read.
Boston and New York could be shut. Hartford was not. The Courant is the score for a paper that kept a town in the war when the famous presses could not.
Then do this. Notice which news you only hear because someone far from the event kept printing.
1776
A house that did not read English was not left outside the sentence.
Henrich Miller, Philadelphia. German. He reported the Declaration on July 5 and printed a German text on July 9.
Industry
9/10
Translation is labor. He made the week available in the other language of the city.
Household
9/10
The German-speaking house is a real house, not a footnote.
Piety
9/10
A newspaper, not a sermon.
Courage
9/10
He printed the break in a language the neighbors actually spoke.
Republic
9/10
A people includes the street that does not speak the Congress's English.
Temperance
9/10
The same partisan frame as the English papers. The service is the translation.
Truth
9/10
He told them, on July 5, that the text existed, and then he gave them the words.
Stewardship
9/10
A child in that kitchen could hear the Declaration in the language of the table.
Miller's Staatsbote told German Philadelphia, the morning after the Fourth, that Congress had declared the colonies free. On July 9 he printed a German text. Steiner and Cist, who had already printed Common Sense in German, put out a German broadside that same week.
Then do this. If someone in the house does not share the language of the news, read them the part that would change their week.
1773
The other argument. A child in a town the British held could hear it.
James Rivington. The loud paper for the king. Patriots wrecked the shop in 1775.
Industry
9/10
A printer's trade, spent on the loyal side.
Household
9/10
Readers, not a family.
Piety
9/10
Order and the crown, more than a creed.
Courage
9/10
A minority sheet in a patriot town took nerve, until the shop was destroyed.
Republic
9/10
He argues for the old law, not for a republic. He is not arguing for nothing.
Temperance
9/10
Scorn is a tool on this page, as heat was a tool on the other.
Truth
9/10
It is an actual opposing voice, and it is also propaganda.
Stewardship
9/10
When the shop was gone, the argument did not vanish. It came back with the army.
Rivington printed for the king. In 1775 a patriot mob wrecked his shop and he left. He was not steadily on the stands through 1776. The loyal case did not disappear. Where the British held the town, a child heard the other paper.
Then do this. Read one argument you think is finished. Say what it was trying to keep.
1732
Poor Richard's Almanack
91/100
Weather, planting, and a proverb. A tool kept the whole year.
Benjamin Franklin wrote it through 1758. By 1776 the name was still in the house, in other hands.
Industry
10/10
Work, thrift, and the day are the whole doctrine.
Household
9/10
A house runs on the calendar. Early to bed is a household rule.
Piety
9/10
Usefulness stands where a creed might. Some of the piety is a proverb.
Courage
9/10
No battle. The courage is doing the small thing on time.
Republic
9/10
A shared calendar is how a town farms and how it meets.
Temperance
9/10
Appetite is the enemy of the maxim. Spend less. Drink less. Rise.
Truth
9/10
The maxims are often true, and some of them are a salesman talking.
Stewardship
9/10
Hung on a nail and used until the year was over. Then the next one.
Franklin had stopped writing Poor Richard long before the war. The name stayed, because a house needed a book that was not the Bible and was still kept all year. Planting, money, a joke, a rule for work.
Then do this. Keep one practical book where the house can reach it without a screen. Use it this week.
1776
You met the war while you looked up the frost.
A patriot almanac. The argument sat inside the planting charts.
Industry
9/10
Still a farmer's tool. The charts had to be right enough to use.
Household
9/10
It lived in the house, beside the work of the year.
Piety
9/10
The politics are not a catechism.
Courage
9/10
Putting the patriot case into a book everyone kept was a risk of a quiet kind.
Republic
9/10
The town's calendar and the town's side became the same object.
Temperance
9/10
A reference book. The heat is in the essays, not in a picture.
Truth
9/10
Astrology and politics share a page. One of those is a forecast, and one is a side.
Stewardship
9/10
Kept, marked, and replaced when the year turned.
An almanac was the book a working house actually touched. Bickerstaff's put the patriot essay where the frost dates were, so you did not go looking for the argument. It found you on the way to the field.
Then do this. When a useful thing carries a side, say the side out loud before you trust the dates.
1776
The tavern reading
90/100
How a thirteen-year-old, too young for the drink, got the war.
The post rider left the papers. A literate man stood on a chair and read them.
Industry
9/10
The post, the horn, and the reading are work the town depended on.
Household
9/10
A child is at the window, not at the table. He is allowed to hear.
Piety
9/10
The room is not a church. God is not why they are gathered.
Courage
9/10
News of a loss still gets read. That is a kind of nerve.
Republic
9/10
The public thing is said in public, to people who cannot buy the sheet.
Temperance
9/10
The room sells drink. A child is present to the appetite even if he is outside it.
Truth
9/10
The words are the paper's words, heard, not whispered into one ear.
Stewardship
9/10
A town memory. Not a private feed. It ends when the reader sits down.
This is not a book. It is the way the books and papers arrived. The rider blew a horn, the bundle hit the bar, and someone who could read stood up. People who could not read got the year anyway.
Then do this. Read one piece of news aloud in the house this week. No one holds a separate screen.
1776
The Sunday pulpit
90/100
For many houses, Sunday was the news, and the news had a conscience in it.
The minister told the week as well as the text.
Industry
9/10
A weekly labor of reading, writing, and standing up in front of the town.
Household
9/10
The household is in the pews. Children are not excused from the hour.
Piety
9/10
Reverence is the room. The soul is assumed, not joked about.
Courage
9/10
A minister who named the war from the pulpit could lose the town or the army's patience.
Republic
9/10
The neighbor is present. What is owed is said where he can hear it.
Temperance
9/10
Appetite is not the liturgy. The hour is slow on purpose.
Truth
9/10
A text is read, then applied. A partisan sermon can still bend the text.
Stewardship
9/10
The same people, every week, taught to stay for something longer than a notice.
In a lot of towns the Sunday sermon was the only long speech a child heard from an adult who was not his father. The text was scripture. The application was often the war, the king, or the neighbor who had gone over.
Then do this. Sit through one argument that lasts longer than a song, with the people you live with.
1776
The square
90/100
The Declaration, the enlistment, and the anger, all where you already were.
A sheriff or a crier read the orders. A crowd burned a straw figure of a man they hated.
Industry
9/10
A crier, a drum, a proclamation. Real jobs, used as theater too.
Household
9/10
The family is in the crowd, not at home.
Piety
9/10
Sometimes a hymn. Often a shout.
Courage
9/10
You showed your face. Neutrality was harder in a square than in a kitchen.
Republic
9/10
The public act is the point: a reading, a liberty pole, a muster.
Temperance
9/10
An effigy is rage given a body. The crowd enjoys the burning.
Truth
9/10
The words read out are the real decree. The dummy is a feeling treated as a fact.
Stewardship
9/10
A boy learns what the town will do to a person it has decided on.
The square is where a proclamation became an event. Orders, the Declaration, a muster, a straw man of a royal official or a loyal merchant, paraded and burned. A thirteen-year-old went because everyone went.
Then do this. The next time a crowd is enjoying someone's ruin, step out of it before you cheer.
1680s
The New England Primer
91/100
Memorized. The alphabet and a doctrine, in the same rhyme.
The schoolbook. In Adam's Fall, we sinned all.
Industry
9/10
A child learned to read on it. Reading was the work.
Household
9/10
Taught at the kitchen as well as the school, where there was a school.
Piety
10/10
The rhyme is doctrine. Conscience is not optional decoration.
Courage
9/10
The courage asked of a child is to learn it, not to cross a river.
Republic
9/10
A people who can read can hear a broadside. That is the civic part.
Temperance
9/10
No appetite in it. The warning is the point.
Truth
9/10
It says what it is. It does not pretend to be only a game.
Stewardship
9/10
Handed to children so they could read the Bible, and later the news.
Nearly every literate child in New England had this by heart. The South put fewer children in that room. The Primer is not gentle. The first lessons are the fall, the grave, and the duty to read.
Then do this. Have a child in the house read one hard sentence until he can say it without the page.
1744
The first book meant as a child's pleasure. Morals are sewn on. They are lighter than the Primer.
John Newbery, London. Letters paired with games. A gift, if the house had the money.
Industry
9/10
Letters and games. Learning is smuggled into play.
Household
9/10
A parent gives it. That is a household act.
Piety
9/10
A moral is attached. A creed is not.
Courage
9/10
No risk. A pleasant hour.
Republic
9/10
A private gift, not a town.
Temperance
9/10
Play with a rule. Not a rot.
Truth
9/10
It is what it says: a pretty book for a child.
Stewardship
9/10
Kept, and only in houses that could spare the price.
Newbery made a book a child might want, not only a book a child was assigned. The alphabet comes with a game. A moral comes with the game. It was imported, and it was a present.
Then do this. Give a child one book that is a gift, not a task. Read the first page with him.
1765
A story about a child with no house, and the house as the thing to be repaired.
An orphan with one shoe. Work and reading are how she rises.
Industry
9/10
Learning and labor are how she gets the second shoe, and then a life.
Household
9/10
The lack of a house is the problem. It is not a joke.
Piety
9/10
Virtue is the engine. A named creed is not.
Courage
9/10
She keeps at it without a parent to make her.
Republic
9/10
A neighborhood helps, and judges. The town is small.
Temperance
9/10
Want is not glamorized. The shoe is enough.
Truth
9/10
The moral is plain, and the story keeps it.
Stewardship
9/10
Meant to be read at night, by an older child to a younger one.
Margery Meanwell has one shoe. The book does not treat that as charm. A rich man buys the pair, and the rest of the story is that reading and work can move a child out of the ditch.
Then do this. Ask a child what a person needs before they can learn. Then see if the house provides it.
1776
A penny chapbook
90/100
The shelf children actually passed around. Short, pictured, cut down.
Jack the Giant-Killer, Tom Thumb, Guy of Warwick. Sold by a peddler, traded by children.
Industry
9/10
Cheap print, made to sell. The cutting-down is a kind of work.
Household
9/10
Traded among children. A house might never have chosen it.
Piety
9/10
A moral is sometimes glued on. Often the adventure is the whole.
Courage
9/10
The heroes walk toward a giant. That part is real courage, in a costume.
Republic
9/10
A private trade of pennies. Not a town.
Temperance
9/10
Blood and wonder, portioned small. Not a schooling in cruelty.
Truth
9/10
The old tale is shortened until it fits a pocket. Something true is lost in the cut.
Stewardship
9/10
Passed from child to child until it fell apart. That is a life.
Chapbooks were the children's press. A peddler, a penny, a folded story with a crude picture. Jack the Giant-Killer is not Jack and the Beanstalk. Tom Thumb and Guy of Warwick rode in the same pack.
Then do this. Let a child pick one story himself. Then you read it, and you say what it left out.
1605
Whittington and His Cat
90/100
Told at the fire. A story about leaving, and coming back rich.
A poor boy, a cat, and a fortune made in London.
Industry
9/10
He is a scullion who does not quit. The cat is work, of a strange kind.
Household
9/10
He comes back to the city that used him. A house is the reward.
Piety
9/10
Fortune, more than providence, gets the credit in the way children hear it.
Courage
9/10
He leaves with nothing. That is the brave part.
Republic
9/10
London and a fortune. The neighbor is not the point.
Temperance
9/10
Wealth arrives as wonder. The story does not quite worship it.
Truth
9/10
A legend told as a life. The cat is not a fact. The poverty is.
Stewardship
9/10
Kept by telling. No book required.
Dick Whittington hears the bells say he will be mayor, and a cat he did not think was worth much makes the fortune. Children heard it as hope: a nobody can leave and return as somebody.
Then do this. Tell a child about one real person who started with a skill, not a miracle.
1595
Babes in the Wood
90/100
Told so a child would not wander, and would not trust the stranger.
Two orphans left in a forest. A warning, not a comfort.
Industry
9/10
No work. The children are abandoned. That is the plot.
Household
9/10
An uncle's broken trust is the horror. A house that fails is not shrugged off.
Piety
9/10
In the old telling, the birds cover the bodies. Mercy arrives too late to save them.
Courage
9/10
The children endure. They do not get a victory.
Republic
9/10
A family crime, not a town.
Temperance
9/10
Greed is the uncle's motive, and it is not rewarded.
Truth
9/10
Abandonment has a bill. The story does not wink.
Stewardship
9/10
Told at night to keep a child in the yard. Fear is the teacher.
The babes are left under a tree by a man who was paid to kill them and cannot. They die anyway. Robins cover them with leaves. It is a harsh thing to tell a child, and that harshness is why it was told.
Then do this. If you tell a frightening story, tell also what the child is supposed to do, not only what to fear.
1763
A grandfather's war
90/100
No book. Who died, who held the farm, how the family got here.
The French and Indian War had ended thirteen years before. The voyage over was older than that.
Industry
9/10
The story is carried by a person who did the thing, or buried the person who did.
Household
9/10
This is the household's memory. Births were in the Bible. The war was in the voice.
Piety
9/10
Providence is often claimed. Sometimes it is only survival.
Courage
9/10
He tells the part where men died. A child is allowed to hear the cost.
Republic
9/10
A family inside a larger fight. The neighbor on the frontier was not theoretical.
Temperance
9/10
Blood is not a sport in a grandfather's telling, when the telling is honest.
Truth
9/10
It can be embroidered. It is still an account with names in it.
Stewardship
9/10
If he does not tell it, the child cannot look it up. Paper was too dear, and no one wrote it down.
A thirteen-year-old in 1776 had a grandfather who had been in the French and Indian War, or who had crossed the ocean. That was the history available after dark. No index. No second source in the house.
Then do this. Ask the oldest person in the family for one story with a name, a place, and a cost. Write it down.
1776
A town's ghost stories
90/100
The night's entertainment. Superstition was ordinary.
A hanging ground, a witch, a light in a swamp. Told as fact.
Industry
9/10
No work. A thrill.
Household
9/10
Told by the fire, which is a family act. The content does not build a house.
Piety
9/10
Fear of spirits is not reverence. It is the opposite of a catechism.
Courage
9/10
A child listens. He is not asked to do anything brave.
Republic
9/10
The town shares a scare. It does not share a duty.
Temperance
9/10
Dread, portioned at night. Not cruelty. Not a lesson in appetite either.
Truth
9/10
Told as if it happened. Often it did not. The story does not care.
Stewardship
9/10
Handed on, and what is handed on is a fright.
Not every story at the fire was Bunyan. A child also got the local dead: a witch, a light, a man who did not stay buried. People believed more of it than a later century likes to admit.
Then do this. If a ghost story is told in the house, say plainly that it is a story.
1852
Uncle Tom's Cabin
69/100
It's against selling people, and it still talks in the types of 1852.
Stowe's 1852 novel: a man is sold, a mother runs, and the book is against the sale.
Industry
7/10
A man is sold; Stowe treats that sale as work a country should refuse.
Household
8/10
A mother runs with her child; the sold man is taken out of his life.
Piety
8/10
The novel asks a conscience to stop the sale of people.
Courage
8/10
A mother runs with her child instead of accepting the sale.
Republic
7/10
It argues against a law that sold neighbors, and still uses 1852 types.
Temperance
6/10
It asks readers to give up the sale, not to wait for the next cruelty.
Truth
6/10
Against the sale, and still written in the types and dialect of 1852.
Stewardship
5/10
Left behind: a case against the sale, and portraits a later reader must refuse.
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote the novel in 1852, and it is the novel I mean, not the 1903 picture and not the 1914 one. A man is sold. A mother runs with her child. The book is against the sale of people, which is the part I won't soften. It also uses the types and the dialect of 1852, and a parent who skips that is only reading the half that feels clean.
Then do this. This week read a stretch of Stowe and underline one 1852 type you would not repeat.
1880
Skip the movies; Wallace's race is the hook and Christ stays off to the side.
A betrayed prince is sent to the galleys and comes back for a chariot race.
Industry
5/10
Galleys are forced labor; the chariot race is spectacle, not a living.
Household
4/10
A prince is betrayed and sent off; no marriage is the life of the plot.
Piety
7/10
Christ stays at the edge, the faith as frame and not the hero of the plot.
Courage
7/10
Betrayed and sent to the galleys, he comes back for the race.
Republic
5/10
Rome can send a prince to the galleys; the race does not repair that.
Temperance
4/10
Readers are trained to wait for the race; the faith only frames it.
Truth
6/10
A betrayal puts him in the galleys; the huge sales are not one audited sum.
Stewardship
5/10
Wallace left an 1880 novel with a faith frame, not the later films.
Lew Wallace's book is from 1880. It is not the 1907 reel, not the 1925 film, and not the 1959 film, no matter how many times a relative brings up the race they saw. A prince is betrayed, sent to the galleys, and comes back for a chariot race. Christ is at the edge of the story, not the hero of the plot. The race is the spectacle. The faith is the frame.
Then do this. Open Wallace's 1880 book, leave every Ben-Hur film off, and stop where Christ is only the frame.
1896
In His Steps
54/100
It's a sermon dressed as a town, and I wouldn't trust the sales number.
Sheldon's town tries to ask what Jesus would do before every choice.
Industry
5/10
Daily choices are the subject, but the jobs sit inside a sermon.
Household
4/10
The town is an argument, not a report of real parents or children.
Piety
8/10
Before each choice the town asks what Jesus would do.
Courage
6/10
The question is supposed to cost the chooser something he would keep.
Republic
6/10
Neighbors are told they owe one another an answer before they act.
Temperance
6/10
The pledge is meant to check want, and it is a sermon, not a life.
Truth
4/10
Claimed sales are not audited, and the town is not a real place.
Stewardship
4/10
What remains is a repeated question, not a town you could visit.
Charles Sheldon, 1896: a town tries to ask, before each choice, what Jesus would do. The piety is the product. A house can read it, and it reads fast because it is an argument in a story, not a report of a real town. I knew that going in and I still felt the push of the question, which is what he wanted.
Then do this. Do one errand this week only after asking Sheldon's question, and ignore every sales figure.
1838
Oliver Twist
58/100
The hunger is the part that stays, and I don't need the den's violence.
A workhouse boy asks for more, is sold on, and falls among thieves.
Industry
4/10
The workhouse is a machine; he is sold on instead of taught a living.
Household
7/10
A boy without parents is offered a gentleman's house as the other life.
Piety
4/10
Hunger is the moral fact; the book does not stop to name a creed.
Courage
6/10
He asks for more inside a workhouse built to refuse him.
Republic
8/10
The parish workhouse is the town's answer to a hungry child.
Temperance
6/10
The want on the page is hunger, not a feast you are told to crave.
Truth
6/10
He falls among thieves; the gentleman's house is the life outside that den.
Stewardship
5/10
The century actually read it: a boy the workhouse would not feed.
Oliver asks for more. That is the bit I remember when I am too tired to summarize Dickens. He is sold on, falls among thieves, and a gentleman's house is the other life. The workhouse is the machine. The hunger is the point. I won't linger on the violence, and I don't want a child lingering there either.
Then do this. Read Oliver's workhouse pages with a child and shut the book before lingering on the thieves.
1859
A Tale of Two Cities
66/100
The crowd turns into a terror, and one wasted man spends himself for another.
A wasted man spends his life for another while a revolution eats its own.
Industry
5/10
A man wastes his life, then spends what is left of it for another.
Household
7/10
The substitute spends his life so another household can go on.
Piety
7/10
The mercy at the end is a man who stops keeping himself.
Courage
9/10
He spends a wasted life for another and cannot have it back.
Republic
8/10
A crowd in Paris becomes a terror, and the revolution eats its own.
Temperance
6/10
The rage runs up a bill; the book does not teach you to enjoy it.
Truth
5/10
The substitute is a mercy the crowd is not told in time.
Stewardship
6/10
After the terror, what the book leaves is that one spent life.
London and Paris, 1859, Charles Dickens. A man wastes his life and then spends it for another. A revolution eats its own. I can say that much from the couch without turning the ending into a speech. The guillotine is the bill of the rage. I won't describe the blade. The substitute at the end is the mercy, and that is the part worth staying up for.
Then do this. Read one London chapter and one Paris chapter, and refuse to describe the blade.
1861
Great Expectations
65/100
The money isn't clean, and he was taught to be ashamed of the forge.
Pip leaves a forge on secret money and is taught shame for the people who loved him.
Industry
8/10
The forge was the real work; the secret money buys a false life.
Household
8/10
Pip is taught to be ashamed of the people who loved him.
Piety
5/10
Seeing the shame is the conscience; someone else planted it first.
Courage
5/10
Getting free of the forge looks bold and costs the people who loved him.
Republic
5/10
Money that is not clean buys the life a town is meant to admire.
Temperance
7/10
The expectations are a false life, and the book will not bless them.
Truth
8/10
The benefactor is not who he thinks, and the money is not clean.
Stewardship
6/10
The people who loved him are what the false life spends.
Pip is helped out of a forge and taught to be ashamed of the people who loved him. I know the price when a child learns to look down. The benefactor is not who he thinks. The money comes from a secret, and the money is not clean. Charles Dickens, 1861. The expectations are a false life. The forge was the real work.
Then do this. Read the forge before the money, and tell the house the expectations are a false life.
1850
David Copperfield
69/100
Long, and worth it for the marriages, if you can get past the Murdstones.
A boy is put to work, hurt at school, and saved by people who are not his parents.
Industry
8/10
A boy is sent to work, and the later job is becoming a writer.
Household
9/10
The Murdstones abuse a household; the good marriages and the bad one are the lesson.
Piety
6/10
People who are not his parents save him more than once.
Courage
7/10
He is beaten at school and sent to work, and other people take him in.
Republic
5/10
School and hired-out labor are the systems around the child.
Temperance
6/10
The bad marriage is the want that fails; the good ones are the check.
Truth
7/10
He becomes a writer of a childhood the Murdstones kept looking proper.
Stewardship
7/10
He is left the people who saved him, and the work of writing it down.
David is sent to work, beaten at school, and saved more than once by people who are not his parents. I'm not going to linger on the beatings. The Murdstones are the abuse of a household, and that is enough to say. Charles Dickens wrote a childhood, a marriage, and the work of becoming a writer. The good marriages and the bad one are the lesson I actually kept.
Then do this. Read past the school without describing the beatings, then say which marriage you'd keep.
1865
It's the book, the nonsense is the fun, and it isn't a lesson or a movie.
Carroll's girl follows a rabbit, and the rules stop meaning what they say.
Industry
2/10
Nobody works a job; a girl follows a rabbit.
Household
4/10
A girl is the traveler, and no parent is along for the journey.
Piety
2/10
It is not a lesson in obedience, and no conscience stops the nonsense.
Courage
4/10
She follows a rabbit where the rules stop meaning what they say.
Republic
3/10
The rules stop meaning what they say, and no town is owed anything.
Temperance
3/10
The nonsense is the pleasure, and the next odd rule is the bait.
Truth
3/10
Rules and promises do not hold; the joke is that they come without a bill.
Stewardship
4/10
A child can keep the 1865 book, which is not any later Alice film.
A girl follows a rabbit and the rules stop meaning what they say. Lewis Carroll, 1865. A child can read it. I've read it that way, at bedtime, when I wanted something that wouldn't turn into a speech. The nonsense is the pleasure. It is not a lesson in obedience.
Then do this. Read one Carroll chapter aloud from the 1865 book and play no Alice film after it.
1876
Funny about the fence, and then they see a murder, so stay in the room.
Tom tricks a boy into painting a fence, and he and Huck witness a graveyard murder.
Industry
2/10
Tom tricks a boy into whitewashing a fence rather than do the work.
Household
6/10
The boy is known by the whole small town; read him with a parent.
Piety
2/10
No conscience stops the fence trick; the joke is that it works.
Courage
6/10
He and Huck see a murder in a graveyard, and the cave is the other risk.
Republic
6/10
The town is small enough that everyone knows the boy.
Temperance
3/10
He would rather trick a friend than work, and the book enjoys it.
Truth
4/10
The fence is finished by a trick; the graveyard holds a murder he saw.
Stewardship
4/10
Left behind is a boy's town and a fence painted by somebody else.
Tom would rather trick a boy into whitewashing a fence than do the work. That's the public image, and it's funny until you are the one who needed the fence done. He and Huck see a murder in a graveyard. I won't linger on the murder. Mark Twain's town is small enough that everyone knows the boy. The cave is the other picture people mean when they say the title.
Then do this. After the fence chapter, give your child one chore Tom would have tricked a friend into doing.
1894
The Jungle Book
55/100
Mowgli's law is Kipling's, an Englishman writing India, not a cartoon.
Kipling's wolf-boy lives under a jungle law an Englishman wrote about India.
Industry
5/10
The law is the work the wolf-boy is supposed to learn and keep.
Household
7/10
A boy is raised by wolves, so that pack is the household.
Piety
6/10
The jungle has a law, and that law is the check he wanted.
Courage
6/10
A boy lives under the law among wolves that are not a game.
Republic
6/10
The pack owes a law, written by an Englishman about India.
Temperance
6/10
The law is there to hold want; that is the point he wanted.
Truth
4/10
An Englishman wrote India; it is not a neutral portrait of the country.
Stewardship
4/10
A child can hear Mowgli and still inherit Kipling's frame, not India's.
A boy is raised by wolves. The jungle has a law. Rudyard Kipling wanted that law to be the point, and a child can hear the stories. I've used them at bedtime. They are not the later cartoon, and I don't want a picture standing in for the book.
Then do this. Read one Mowgli story and, before any cartoon, say an Englishman wrote this India.
1877
Black Beauty
65/100
The horse tells it, and the kind hands don't cancel the cruel ones.
A horse tells how he passed from kind hands to cruel ones.
Industry
8/10
The horse's work is the story, treated as a life and not a machine.
Household
4/10
No marriage or child; his life is which hands he is passed to.
Piety
7/10
The book wants the whip refused, which is a conscience about cruelty.
Courage
5/10
Kind hands keep him; cruel hands can spend a life that cannot quit.
Republic
6/10
How a working horse is used is the duty this child's book argues.
Temperance
7/10
The whip is the want the book refuses to treat as a tool.
Truth
7/10
The horse tells it, so the cruelty is charged to the hands that did it.
Stewardship
8/10
A child is left a horse's working life and a bill for the whip.
Anna Sewell lets the horse tell it. He passes from kind hands to cruel ones. The work of a horse is treated as a life, not a machine. The whip is the thing the book is against. A child can read it, and then wants to know why anyone would hurt an animal that was doing the job.
Then do this. Read Sewell for half an hour and name one use of the whip you will not repeat this week.
1837
The Little Mermaid
44/100
Don't promise a wedding; she loses her voice and the prince never chooses her.
A mermaid trades her voice for legs, and the prince does not choose her.
Industry
2/10
No one holds a job; she spends a voice, not a wage.
Household
3/10
The prince does not choose her, so no household begins.
Piety
7/10
She trades her voice for a chance at a human soul.
Courage
8/10
She gives up the voice she would miss, and still is not chosen.
Republic
1/10
No neighbor, law, or town is owed a thing in this tale.
Temperance
3/10
She spends the voice before the want has any brake.
Truth
8/10
The sea-witch is no friend, and there is no wedding.
Stewardship
3/10
A voice is already spent, and nothing is left built.
I sat down sure I remembered a wedding, and I was remembering the cartoon. In Andersen she trades her voice for legs and a chance at a human soul. The prince does not choose her. The sea-witch takes the voice, and she is not a friend you get to like.
Then do this. Read Andersen to a child this week and say it does not end in a wedding.
1818
Frankenstein
50/100
A student makes a man, refuses to parent him, and leaves a ruin.
A student builds a man, abandons him, and the creature becomes a ruin.
Industry
6/10
A student's labor is the making of a man, and it matters.
Household
8/10
He builds a man and will not parent the life he made.
Piety
6/10
Conscience could have held him, and he still leaves the debt.
Courage
3/10
He will not face the being he would have had to keep.
Republic
4/10
The debt is to the life he made, not to a town.
Temperance
3/10
Making the man runs past any limit he was willing to hold.
Truth
8/10
He owes a life to what he made, and ruin is the bill.
Stewardship
2/10
What he leaves is a creature already turned into a ruin.
Clear the 1931 film off the table before you open this. Shelley has a student build a man and then refuse to parent him. The creature is abandoned and becomes a ruin. The maker owes a life to what he made. I don't have a line of his to repeat, and I won't make one up.
Then do this. Read the 1818 novel with a teen and don't invent a speech for the creature.
1897
Dracula
56/100
He buys a house, lives on blood, and only a written hunt stands against him.
A count buys an English house, lives on blood, and a small band hunts him.
Industry
5/10
The band's labor is letters, diaries, and then the hunt.
Household
3/10
The house he buys in England is a foothold, not a family.
Piety
5/10
He enters only where he is invited, a limit he didn't choose.
Courage
7/10
A small band hunts a count who lives on blood.
Republic
7/10
They keep a record and hunt him for the people in his way.
Temperance
4/10
He lives on blood, and nothing in him puts that down.
Truth
8/10
Letters and diaries are the record the hunt has to trust.
Stewardship
6/10
The hunt is what they try to leave where the count stood.
I kept waiting for a movie entrance and got mail instead. A count from Transylvania buys a house in England and lives on blood. A small band writes the story in letters and diaries, then hunts him. He enters only where he is invited. The hunger is what they are up against, not a costume change.
Then do this. Read a run of the letters this week and mark each time he had to be invited.
1886
He takes a drug to dodge the blame, and the blame stays his anyway.
A respectable man uses a drug so he can be the other man without blame.
Industry
4/10
Respectability is the cover; the drug is the door he uses.
Household
2/10
No marriage, parent, or child is lived in this case.
Piety
6/10
He wants the other man without blame, and cannot have that.
Courage
2/10
The drug is how he avoids risking the name he has.
Republic
6/10
He remains responsible for the man he lets out on others.
Temperance
2/10
The want gets a second body instead of any limit.
Truth
9/10
The lie is that he can be the other man and not answer.
Stewardship
2/10
He leaves loose a man he meant never to own.
I wanted the drug to work as a loophole. Stevenson won't give him one. A respectable man takes it so he can be the other man without blame. The drug is the door. He is responsible for the one he lets out. I'm not going to say what that one does. A teen doesn't need the picture from me.
Then do this. Pass a teen the novella and talk only about the drug and who owns the blame.
1898
The War of the Worlds
48/100
Martians burn the towns, and the empire meets conquest in its own fields.
Martians land in England, burn the towns, and a narrator walks the wreck.
Industry
3/10
The narrator's work is walking the wreck, not a trade.
Household
2/10
No marriage or child is the life inside this walk.
Piety
6/10
An empire meets, in its own fields, what it dealt others.
Courage
5/10
The narrator keeps walking through towns that have burned.
Republic
8/10
Conquerors of other peoples are conquered in their fields.
Temperance
5/10
The hunger to conquer is answered by a larger one.
Truth
7/10
Empire's pride meets the fact of its own occupied fields.
Stewardship
2/10
What remains of the towns is wreck, and he walks it.
Don't linger on the burning. Wells lands Martians in England, the towns burn, and a narrator walks through the wreck. The colder point is the one that isn't a show. An empire that conquered other peoples is conquered in its own fields. That's the sentence I kept.
Then do this. After one chapter, name a people that empire conquered before the landing.
1895
The Time Machine
53/100
Pretty people are cattle over buried workers, and then the sun dies.
An inventor finds two ruined classes in the future, then a dying earth.
Industry
8/10
Workers live underground while pretty people are kept as cattle.
Household
2/10
No parent, marriage, or child is a life in this future.
Piety
4/10
No one's conscience stops the class split before it hardens.
Courage
7/10
He rides past his own century and on to a dying earth.
Republic
8/10
One class is used as cattle and the other is buried at work.
Temperance
3/10
The pretty people live idle, fed by someone else's labor.
Truth
8/10
The pretty surface hides workers living underground.
Stewardship
2/10
The last picture is a dying earth and the end of the sun.
An inventor rides out of his own year, and the future is not a prize. Pretty people are cattle. Workers live underground. The classes are the warning. Then he goes farther, to a dying earth, and the last picture is the end of the sun. I didn't need a speech pinned on the back.
Then do this. Ask a teen which of Wells's future peoples are cattle and which work below.
1870
The sea is wonderful, and the book will not call Nemo's war right.
A professor is taken aboard a submarine by a captain who quit the land.
Industry
7/10
A professor studies the sea from a working submarine.
Household
2/10
The captain quit the land, and no household sails with him.
Piety
5/10
The book never quite settles whether Nemo's war is right.
Courage
6/10
The professor is taken aboard and kept at sea under Nemo.
Republic
5/10
Nemo's war is his own, quit of the lands other people share.
Temperance
5/10
The sea is the wonder; the war is a want the book won't bless.
Truth
6/10
Verne leaves Nemo's rightness open instead of forcing it.
Stewardship
4/10
He spends the sea on a private war and leaves that unsettled.
We read it the way it asks, a child with a parent nearby. Verne puts a professor on a submarine he didn't choose. The captain has quit the land. The sea is the wonder. Nemo's war is his own, and I kept waiting for a clear yes or no on whether he is right. The book doesn't quite give one.
Then do this. Read one chapter of Nemo with your child and leave his war undecided.
1873
The eighty-day bet is a good ride, and the rescue was still not asked for.
Phileas Fogg bets on eighty days while Passepartout does the work.
Industry
8/10
Passepartout does the work the gentleman's bet will not.
Household
4/10
A woman is rescued along the way, and she is not asked.
Piety
3/10
The timetable doesn't stop so anyone can ask her first.
Courage
5/10
Fogg risks the wager and the days, with a servant covering.
Republic
3/10
A private bet circles the globe and never becomes a duty.
Temperance
4/10
He wants the eighty days enough to let another man labor.
Truth
6/10
The schedule is a public promise; her rescue is careless.
Stewardship
3/10
A finished route is left, and a woman moved without a real ask.
Fogg bets he can circle the earth in eighty days. The schedule is the plot, and it moves. Passepartout does the work the gentleman will not. A house can enjoy the clock. Then a woman is rescued along the way. The rescue is not asked for in any careful way. I'm saying it plain, because the pace will try to skate past her.
Then do this. When the woman is rescued, stop and say the rescue was not asked for.
1862
Les Misérables
69/100
He steals bread, serves the years, and an inspector hunts him anyway.
A man is hunted over stolen bread while a child is raised in secret.
Industry
6/10
The crime is bread, and the years he serves are the price.
Household
8/10
A child is raised in secret, and that raising is a life.
Piety
5/10
The law's conscience will not forgive a man who stole bread.
Courage
7/10
He goes on hunted while a child is still raised in secret.
Republic
9/10
An inspector hunts him after the years for a theft of bread.
Temperance
6/10
He steals from hunger, not from a want you're meant to copy.
Truth
7/10
The years get served, and the hunt still does not let him go.
Stewardship
7/10
What he leaves standing is a child raised out of the hunt.
Start with the bread, not with the book's fame. A man steals it, serves the years, and an inspector hunts him after. The law will not forgive that crime. A woman is driven somewhere I won't describe, and a child is raised in secret. A house can read the novel. It isn't the musical, and it isn't the 1912 film.
Then do this. Open Hugo at the stolen bread and refuse to describe the street at all.
1844
A false charge and a treasure, then he spends the years he could have lived.
A sailor jailed on a lie escapes, finds treasure, and lives for revenge.
Industry
5/10
He begins as a sailor; treasure turns the work into revenge.
Household
3/10
The years he could have lived go to the men, not a home.
Piety
3/10
Nothing in him stops once the false charge has a fortune.
Courage
6/10
He escapes the false charge, then hazards the years he has left.
Republic
7/10
A false charge uses the law to bury a sailor who hadn't done it.
Temperance
2/10
Revenge takes the years he could have lived, and he lets it.
Truth
7/10
The charge is a lie, and disguise is how he answers the men.
Stewardship
2/10
A fortune is left, and a life is spent paying other men.
The time is what I can't shrug off. A sailor is put away on a false charge. He escapes, finds a treasure, and spends his life on the men who did it. The disguise is the method. The revenge takes the years he could have lived. A house can read that. I wouldn't call the fortune a happy landing.
Then do this. Tally the years this sailor spends on the men who framed him, not on a life.
1844
The Three Musketeers
34/100
Their loyalty is a pleasure, and the bodies are still a game to them.
A poor Gascon joins three swordsmen while a woman is hunted for jewelry.
Industry
3/10
Four men live by the sword, a game more than a trade.
Household
3/10
A woman is hunted for jewelry, not lived with as a household.
Piety
2/10
Their loyalty never makes them regret that bodies are a game.
Courage
5/10
They risk bodies they treat as sport, over a queen's diamonds.
Republic
4/10
The debt that holds is to the four, not to the town.
Temperance
2/10
The fighting is the pleasure, and nothing in them curbs it.
Truth
6/10
The four stay loyal while a woman is hunted for jewelry.
Stewardship
2/10
They leave a game of bodies and a woman still in the chase.
The loyalty is the fun, and I don't quite trust the fun. A poor Gascon joins three men who live by the sword. A woman in the plot is hunted for a piece of jewelry, with a queen's diamonds in that trouble. A teen can read it. I wouldn't offer it as proof that friendship excuses the rest.
Then do this. Read one chapter of the four and tell a teen the bodies are a game to them.
1831
The cathedral's still standing, and the archdeacon's want is what actually ruins her.
Hugo's novel of a bell-ringer, a condemned dancer, and a cathedral that outlasts the men.
Industry
6/10
Quasimodo's work is ringing the bells of the cathedral.
Household
3/10
Esmeralda is desired and then condemned by the city.
Piety
2/10
The archdeacon's want is the engine of the ruin.
Courage
4/10
The city condemns Esmeralda after desiring her.
Republic
5/10
The city calls him a monster and condemns Esmeralda.
Temperance
3/10
The archdeacon's want runs the plot and is not put down.
Truth
6/10
They call him a monster; the ruin starts in the archdeacon.
Stewardship
6/10
The building outlasts the men who wreck one another.
The cathedral is the thing that lasts. Quasimodo rings the bells, the city calls him a monster, and Esmeralda is desired and then condemned. I kept waiting for the building to make the men inside it better. It doesn't. The archdeacon's want runs the ruin, and Hugo is not shy about a churchman being the engine.
Then do this. Walk to the oldest church you can reach this week and say the stone is not the same thing as the man whose want wrecks the woman.
1866
Crime and Punishment
55/100
He wanted permission to stand above the law, and his own mind wouldn't give it.
A student acts on a theory that he may kill, and his mind will not live with it.
Industry
3/10
He is a student with a theory, not a man at a trade.
Household
4/10
A pawnbroker and her sister are the two lives the theory spends.
Piety
8/10
A woman who reads the Gospels to him is the other road.
Courage
5/10
He acts to prove he may, then cannot live with the proof.
Republic
7/10
He treats a neighbor's life as his to take; the book refuses that.
Temperance
6/10
The hunger to be the man who may is one his mind rejects.
Truth
8/10
The theory that he may comes due inside his own mind.
Stewardship
3/10
The theory spends two women, and a restless mind is what remains.
He wants to be the sort of man who is allowed. That's the theory, and Dostoevsky spends the book refusing it. Raskolnikov is a student. To prove he may, he takes the lives of a pawnbroker and her sister, and I won't walk anyone through how. The bill is his own mind. He cannot live with what the idea said he could do.
Then do this. Put the book down before anyone retells the murder, and talk only about a theory his mind cannot live with.
1877
Anna Karenina
55/100
It's adult, she leaves the household, and that household is what I can't shake.
Tolstoy's adult novel of a broken marriage and another that holds on the land.
Industry
7/10
Levin stays on the land and learns from that work.
Household
8/10
One marriage breaks, one holds, and the home she left is the bill.
Piety
5/10
Anna does not turn back; Levin is the one who learns a plainer life.
Courage
5/10
She leaves a cold husband for a man who will not be enough.
Republic
3/10
Two private marriages, not a duty owed to a town.
Temperance
5/10
Her want outruns the house; his lesson is the plainer life.
Truth
7/10
The man will not be enough, and the household left behind is the bill.
Stewardship
4/10
Levin's land continues; the household she left is what pays.
This one is adult, and I mean it. Anna leaves a cold husband for a man who will not be enough. Tolstoy also gives you Levin, who stays on the land and learns a plainer life. One marriage breaks. Another holds. I don't need the affair told in this house, and I won't linger on the train. People already know that image. The household she left is the bill.
Then do this. If Anna comes off the shelf this week, read Levin on the land and do not recount the affair or the train.
1869
War and Peace
70/100
Don't read it for the battles. The families that get through them are the point.
Russian families pulled through Napoleon's war, with ordinary life as the point.
Industry
6/10
Ordinary life, not the campaign, is the work he keeps trusting.
Household
8/10
Several households are pulled through the war and remain the point.
Piety
5/10
The war is not a glory; he will not write it as one.
Courage
7/10
Households are taken through battles and a burning city.
Republic
8/10
Russia in the years of Napoleon; the war belongs to the country.
Temperance
7/10
Balls and battles fill the pages, and glory is still refused.
Truth
8/10
The war is not a glory; the life that survives is the claim.
Stewardship
7/10
What lasts is the ordinary life after the city burns.
Nobody in this house is finishing it in a weekend. Tolstoy pulls several households through battles, balls, and a burning city, and he keeps coming back to the ordinary life that survives. The war is not a glory. I felt that more in the rooms than in the long stretches you can put down.
Then do this. Open to a chapter that stays inside a family between battles, and close it when the war starts sounding glorious.
1880
The Brothers Karamazov
53/100
Faith and a murder in one book, a rotten father, and don't forget the son in the yard.
A father, his sons, a murder the wrong man may hang for, and faith in the same book.
Industry
3/10
No trade organizes it; a lecherous father and his sons do.
Household
6/10
The father is a lecher, and a fourth son is left in the yard.
Piety
7/10
One son is a monk, and faith shares the book with a murder.
Courage
5/10
The wrong man may hang for the murder in this book.
Republic
7/10
A court may hang the wrong man, so the law sits inside the dread.
Temperance
3/10
The father is a lecher, and that want sits over the sons.
Truth
7/10
Faith and the murder are one book, and the guilt may miss its man.
Stewardship
4/10
A son is left in the yard, and the wrong man may hang.
A father who is a lecher, and sons who cannot get clear of that. One is passionate, one is a monk, one is the intellect, and a fourth is left in the yard. Dostoevsky puts faith and a murder in the same book. The wrong man may hang. I am not going to describe the killing, and a parent doesn't need that part spelled out.
Then do this. Before any argument about faith, name the four sons out loud, including the one left in the yard.
1847
Wuthering Heights
29/100
Not a love to copy. It wrecks two generations and spends the children.
A foundling and a daughter of the house love each other until two generations are wrecked.
Industry
2/10
The moors and the passion are the matter, not anyone's trade.
Household
4/10
The love wrecks two generations and spends the children.
Piety
2/10
Nothing in the passion stops; it spends the children and goes on.
Courage
3/10
The storm of that love wrecks the house instead of guarding it.
Republic
2/10
The moors are the setting, not a town anyone owes.
Temperance
2/10
The love is a storm, and nobody in it puts the storm down.
Truth
6/10
Brontë does not offer the passion as a model marriage.
Stewardship
2/10
What the storm leaves is a wrecked second generation.
Don't file this under romance and hand it to a teenager in love. A foundling and a daughter of the house want each other in a way that wrecks two generations. Emily Brontë sets it on the moors. The weather is not the problem. The love is not a model. It is a storm that spends the children.
Then do this. When someone calls this their great love, answer that it spends the children, and leave every film version closed.
1850
The Scarlet Letter
58/100
She wears the town's shame in public while the child's father keeps his post.
A woman wears a letter in a Puritan town while the minister who fathered the child hides.
Industry
4/10
The minister keeps an office he has already made a hiding place.
Household
7/10
She bears the child; the father hides; the husband watches.
Piety
4/10
A Puritan town and a minister who hides while she is shamed.
Courage
7/10
She wears the letter in public; he will not stand beside it.
Republic
6/10
The town puts the shame on her and leaves his office untouched.
Temperance
5/10
The child is already born; his hiding is what drags on.
Truth
8/10
His hidden office is the lie; her letter is the public fact.
Stewardship
5/10
A child remains, and so does a town used to shaming the visible one.
She bears the child, and the town makes her wear the letter. The minister who is the father hides. The husband watches. Hawthorne puts the public shame on her and leaves him in his office. I knew the premise. The reading still made me angry on her behalf, which is the right kind of angry.
Then do this. On one sheet, write who wears the letter and who keeps the minister's office, and read that sheet at dinner.
1851
Moby-Dick
45/100
The ship work is real, the hunt is his private war, and 1851 didn't want the book.
A whaling voyage spent on a captain's private hunt; not a hit in its year.
Industry
8/10
Ishmael signs onto a whaler, and the work of the ship is real.
Household
1/10
A crew on a whaler, not a marriage, a parent, or a child.
Piety
3/10
Ahab has one errand, a private war, and he does not turn from it.
Courage
5/10
The crew's risk is real, then spent on his private war.
Republic
6/10
A captain owes the crew their work, not his personal hunt.
Temperance
3/10
One errand eats the voyage; he never puts the hunt down.
Truth
7/10
The hunt is a private war he makes the crew serve.
Stewardship
3/10
The crew serves his errand; the book failed that year and stayed.
It was not a hit in its year. I say that first because the reputation now pretends everyone always knew. Ishmael signs onto a whaler. The work of the ship is real, and then Ahab has one errand. It is a private war, and he makes the crew serve it. Melville wrote a workplace and then let a captain spend that workplace on his own hunt.
Then do this. Read a stretch of the whaling work this week, then say whose private errand the crew is made to serve.
1845
He learns to read while they hold him as property, and that's the turn, not the blows.
Douglass's 1845 account of slavery and of learning to read against the men who held him.
Industry
8/10
He learns letters against the will of the men who hold him.
Household
6/10
He is separated from his mother while held as property.
Piety
4/10
The men who hold him are not stopped by conscience.
Courage
8/10
He learns to read against their will before he is free.
Republic
8/10
He writes the country that is still holding him as property.
Temperance
6/10
The freedom he marks first is reading, not a list of blows.
Truth
9/10
It is his own account of slavery and of learning to read.
Stewardship
8/10
Reading starts the freedom, and the narrative is what he leaves.
Douglass tells it himself. Held as property, separated from his mother, beaten. I am not going to linger on the beatings or ask a child to sit in them. The page that matters here is the one where he learns letters against the will of the men who hold him. That reading is the freedom that starts before the escape.
Then do this. Read the pages where he learns letters against their will, and stop the minute you start retelling the beatings.
1888
Looking Backward
33/100
Don't let Bellamy's year 2000 pass for a forecast that actually landed.
A man sleeps into a year 2000 run as one public machine.
Industry
4/10
Private want ends because the economy is made one public machine.
Household
2/10
The romance is only a coat; no marriage is the life of the book.
Piety
3/10
A system claims want is solved, so nobody has to be stopped.
Courage
2/10
He reaches the year 2000 by sleeping, and the sleep risks nothing.
Republic
5/10
Neighbors are owed one public economy, and it is argued as a plan.
Temperance
3/10
Want is abolished by the machine rather than refused by a person.
Truth
4/10
The printed year 2000 is a device, not a forecast that landed.
Stewardship
3/10
People are left a public machine, not a shop they still own.
A man sleeps, and that is the whole trick. He wakes in Bellamy's year 2000, where private want has been ended by making the economy one public machine. I can see why it sold. It is still a program wearing a romance. I won't tell a teen the printed year came true.
Then do this. Write down three wants Bellamy's public machine claims to have ended, and mark which your street still has.
1892
Read them for the puzzle, and don't bring Holmes home as a model friend.
A detective and a doctor solve the cases clients bring.
Industry
7/10
A consulting detective and a doctor work the cases clients bring.
Household
3/10
Holmes is a mind, not a model of a friend or a household.
Piety
3/10
The cases chase a solution; conscience is not what stops anyone.
Courage
4/10
They take the client's puzzle; the pleasure sold is the answer.
Republic
5/10
The debt in these stories runs to a client, not to a town.
Temperance
4/10
Each solved case is built so you want the next one after it.
Truth
8/10
The pleasure is the solution, so a lie in the case has to break.
Stewardship
3/10
A solved case is what remains; no household is repaired by it.
Clients come, and a doctor writes the cases down. That is the 1892 book: a consulting detective, a puzzle, a solution. The pleasure is the answer, which is why Holmes became a habit. It is also why I don't offer him to my kid as a friend worth copying.
Then do this. Pick one 1892 case, write the client's trouble in a sentence, and only then read the solution.
1819
Ivanhoe
40/100
The tournament is fun, and Rebecca is used, then left out of the marriage.
A disinherited knight comes home into a Norman and Saxon quarrel.
Industry
3/10
The tournament is the spectacle, not a trade that feeds a house.
Household
5/10
A Jewish father and daughter are caught in a quarrel that won't keep them.
Piety
4/10
The Christian quarrel does not let conscience spare Rebecca.
Courage
6/10
A disinherited knight comes home from the Crusades into the quarrel.
Republic
5/10
Norman and Saxon politics are the quarrel, and that quarrel is not kind.
Temperance
3/10
Rebecca is desired, and that wanting is spent as part of the show.
Truth
4/10
Knights look decent while a Jewish daughter is used and not kept.
Stewardship
2/10
The marriage the book keeps is not Rebecca's; she is left outside it.
He comes home from the Crusades disinherited, and the tournament is the part I still see when the politics blur. Norman and Saxon is the quarrel under the show. A teen can read it. The quarrel is not kind to the Jewish father and daughter stuck in it.
Then do this. When Rebecca enters, write what the Christian quarrel uses her for and whether she gets the marriage.
1826
The Last of the Mohicans
36/100
The chase moves, and Native men are still sorted into noble friends and villainous enemies.
A scout leads two daughters through a war in the woods.
Industry
6/10
A scout's work is leading two daughters through the war.
Household
4/10
The daughters are led through a chase; the family is the cargo.
Piety
2/10
Noble friend or villain stands in for a conscience that might stop.
Courage
6/10
The scout takes two daughters through a war that is already on.
Republic
3/10
The title claims a people is ending, and a colonial war is the setting.
Temperance
3/10
The chase is the plot, and it keeps asking for the next danger.
Truth
3/10
Native men are sorted into noble friends and villainous enemies.
Stewardship
2/10
Nothing is restored; the title's claim is that a people is last.
A scout leads two daughters through the French and Indian War. The chase is the plot, and the title talks as if a people were already the last of itself. I wouldn't hand that to a younger child and call the woods an adventure.
Then do this. List each Native man as the book sorts him, noble friend or villainous enemy, and mark if anyone is neither.
1872
Middlemarch
66/100
Marriage is the work in this town, and a bad one sends a bill you can count.
A provincial town of marriages, a reforming doctor, and bills.
Industry
7/10
Lydgate wants to reform medicine, and the town is the work he meets.
Household
8/10
Dorothea is wanted as a secretary, and a bad marriage has a bill.
Piety
6/10
She wants a serious life; he wants a secretary more than a wife.
Courage
6/10
The doctor brings a reform to the town, and she marries the scholar.
Republic
7/10
Middlemarch is the town a medical reform actually has to get through.
Temperance
6/10
Lydgate and Rosamond spend what they do not have.
Truth
8/10
He does not want a wife so much as a secretary, and the match shows it.
Stewardship
5/10
The bills and the bad match remain; the reform does not clear them.
Dorothea marries a scholar who wants a secretary more than a wife. A doctor wants reform and meets the town. I came to it tired, and it still wouldn't let the marriages sit there as decoration. Lydgate and Rosamond spend what they do not have. A bad marriage has a bill.
Then do this. Set Dorothea's marriage beside Lydgate and Rosamond's spending and label which bill is a person.
1848
Vanity Fair
40/100
Becky stays charming while she uses people, and Amelia wastes her loyalty.
A woman without money climbs a society that is also at war.
Industry
4/10
Becky will not stay poor; the climb through a war and a society is the labor.
Household
6/10
Amelia stays loyal to a man who is not worth the loyalty.
Piety
3/10
The title is the judgment; the climber does not stop herself.
Courage
4/10
Becky risks staying poor, and she spends other people to avoid it.
Republic
4/10
A society at war is the field, and the people in it get used.
Temperance
3/10
The charm keeps the climb going, and she does not put it down.
Truth
5/10
Becky is charming, and the charm is how she uses people.
Stewardship
3/10
The people she uses are what the fair spends; little is left them.
Becky Sharp will not stay poor. She climbs through a war and a society, and she is charming while she does it. Amelia stays loyal to a man who is not worth it. Thackeray put the judgment in the title. A teen can read it. I wouldn't let the charm speak last.
Then do this. Find a page where Becky is charming and write the name of the person that charm spends.
1860
The Woman in White
45/100
She's married for the money, then a likeness is used to replace her.
An heiress is married for her money and then replaced.
Industry
4/10
The drawing master has a trade; the fortune is what the plot buys.
Household
6/10
An heiress is married for her money, and the household is the trap.
Piety
3/10
The match is for the money, and conscience does not stop it.
Courage
5/10
A woman in white is met on a night road, already outside any shelter.
Republic
5/10
A likeness is used so a fortune can be kept from the woman who owns it.
Temperance
3/10
The want is her money, and it is fed until she is replaced.
Truth
7/10
A likeness replaces the heiress; the lie is who she is.
Stewardship
3/10
Her name and her fortune are what the marriage takes from her.
A drawing master meets a woman in white on a road at night. From there the marriage does the harm. An heiress is married for her money and then replaced. A likeness is used. I won't invent how the switch is managed. The fact is ugly enough without my help.
Then do this. Stop at the heiress's marriage and say what was bought before the likeness explains the switch.
1868
The Moonstone
58/100
Chase the house theft if you like, but the first theft was a crime of empire.
An Indian diamond is stolen in a war, then stolen again from a house.
Industry
5/10
Several people tell the story in turn, and the telling is the labor.
Household
6/10
The second theft is from an English house full of witnesses.
Piety
6/10
The first taking is left as a wrong, not as a pretty origin story.
Courage
5/10
Each witness has to speak once the stone is gone from the house.
Republic
7/10
The first theft, done in a war, is a crime of empire.
Temperance
4/10
The stone keeps being wanted, first in the war and then in the house.
Truth
8/10
Witnesses can puzzle the second theft; the first theft is already a fact.
Stewardship
5/10
A diamond taken in a war is not a prize the English house can keep.
The theft I want to solve is the second one. An Indian diamond is gone from an English house, and several people tell what they saw. The turns are the pleasure. They sit on an earlier taking, in a war, before that house had a puzzle at all.
Then do this. Before you name the second thief, write who held the Indian diamond when a war took it.
1891
Adult only: the book calls her pure, and the blame is put on her anyway.
A woman is sent to claim kin, used, blamed, and called pure.
Industry
3/10
She is sent to claim kin; that errand is the work her family gives her.
Household
5/10
She marries a man who cannot bear the fact, and the house fails her.
Piety
4/10
The book calls her a pure woman while the blame is put on her.
Courage
3/10
The husband will not bear the fact; the cost of that refusal is hers.
Republic
3/10
Kin send her out, and the blame that comes back is treated as hers.
Temperance
2/10
The man of the house is not stopped, and the blame is moved onto her.
Truth
6/10
It calls her pure, and the man she marries still cannot bear the fact.
Stewardship
2/10
She is left holding the blame; the marriage keeps nothing for her.
Adult, and not a book I leave where a child can reach it. Tess is sent to claim kin, and the man of the house rapes her. I will not describe that. The book calls her a pure woman. The blame is put on her anyway. Being famous doesn't make that gentle.
Then do this. If it is opened, stop where the blame starts and name, without the scene, whose act the blame covers.
1811
Sense and Sensibility
68/100
It's the novel, not the 1995 film, and Elinor is carrying the house, not being cold.
Two sisters lose the estate to the son, and one of them hides what she feels.
Industry
6/10
Once the estate is the son's, Elinor's work is carrying the household.
Household
8/10
Elinor hides what she feels and carries the house; Marianne spends hers.
Piety
7/10
Elinor will not spend the feeling, because someone has to carry the house.
Courage
6/10
The quiet sister bears the loss without making the household pay for it.
Republic
7/10
The law gave the estate to the son, and the sisters live under that rule.
Temperance
7/10
Marianne spends her feeling; Elinor does not, and she is not a prude.
Truth
8/10
A proposal is not the same thing as a marriage, and the difference holds.
Stewardship
5/10
The son has the estate; the women are left the work of a poorer house.
The money is gone because the law gave the estate to the son. That is already done before either sister gets to be a character study. Elinor hides what she feels and carries the household. Marianne spends hers. This is the 1811 novel. I have no interest in putting on the 1995 film instead.
Then do this. Read one chapter of the 1811 novel, not the 1995 film, and note one feeling Elinor will not spend.
1815
Emma
53/100
The clever woman is the joke, and the poorer friend is who pays.
A rich young woman arranges marriages and is wrong about nearly every pair.
Industry
3/10
The work she will not do is see people as they are.
Household
7/10
She invents other people's marriages and hurts a poorer friend.
Piety
5/10
She is wrong about nearly every pair, and the joke is on her.
Courage
3/10
Emma risks little; the poorer friend is the one who gets hurt.
Republic
6/10
A richer woman meddles, and a poorer friend pays for the plans.
Temperance
6/10
Arranging lives is the habit the book laughs at, not a prize.
Truth
8/10
Almost every pair she invents is false, and a friend is hurt.
Stewardship
4/10
What she leaves the poorer friend is the hurt of a false plan.
I kept waiting for the clever woman to be right once. She isn't. Emma meddles and hurts a poorer friend, and she is wrong about almost every pair she invents. The joke is on her. A house can read it, including a teen who thinks being sharp is the same thing as seeing.
Then do this. Before you arrange a poorer friend's life, write down what you actually know about her.
1818
Persuasion
65/100
Eight years gone to a prudent friend, and the sailor comes back richer.
A woman who broke an engagement meets the sailor again, older, when he is richer.
Industry
8/10
The navy is the living work, and he comes back having done it.
Household
8/10
She broke an engagement on advice, then lived eight years of it.
Piety
6/10
A prudent friend stopped the match, and the years are counted.
Courage
7/10
He has the sea; she lives with the refusal and meets him older.
Republic
5/10
The advice was a friend's, and the cost stayed with Anne.
Temperance
6/10
Prudence broke the engagement and did not return the years.
Truth
7/10
The engagement did not hold, and eight years is what it cost.
Stewardship
5/10
Left of it: an older woman, and a man made richer at sea.
Eight years is a long time to lose because a friend sounded prudent. Anne Elliot was persuaded to break an engagement. The man comes back richer, and she is older. The book came out the year after Austen died. A house can read it. I did not find the waiting pretty. It was time gone.
Then do this. Name one prudent no in your house that has already cost someone eight years.
1848
She takes the child and goes, and the law of the time is not with her.
A woman leaves a drunk husband with her child, and the town gossips.
Industry
8/10
After she goes, she supports herself. That is the work.
Household
8/10
She takes the child out of the marriage the diary has told.
Piety
7/10
Conscience here means going, not a reason to stay for show.
Courage
9/10
Leaving is the courage, and the law of the time was against her.
Republic
7/10
The town gossips, and the law of the time was not with her.
Temperance
6/10
A drunk husband wrecks the house; the book will not linger.
Truth
8/10
The diary tells the marriage; the town only has the gossip.
Stewardship
7/10
She keeps the child and a living she makes on her own.
The law of her time was not on her side, and she went anyway. Helen takes her child and leaves. The town gossips. A diary tells what the marriage was. I will not linger on the drinking. It is adult enough for a ruined household: not a small child, and a teen only if you say the marriage is the wreck first.
Then do this. Tell one person the law was against Helen when she took her child and left.
1855
North and South
68/100
The strike is the story, and people are hungry while the pair misjudge.
A parson's daughter and a mill owner misjudge each other across a strike.
Industry
9/10
The work of the mill is the argument, not a romantic set.
Household
6/10
She and the mill owner misjudge each other from opposite lives.
Piety
5/10
She comes from a parsonage into a city run by the mill.
Courage
7/10
The strike is the risk, and the two still misjudge across it.
Republic
9/10
A strike is not a backdrop. People in the town are hungry.
Temperance
5/10
Each wants to be right about the other before looking harder.
Truth
7/10
They misjudge each other while the strike is the true fact.
Stewardship
6/10
During the strike what the town has is hunger, not a wage.
People are hungry. I had this stored as a courtship with chimneys, and it will not stay there. Margaret Hale moves from a parsonage to a factory city. She and a mill owner misjudge each other across a strike. A house can read Gaskell. The work of the mill is the argument, so the machines and the wages come before the misunderstanding.
Then do this. Retell this book from the strike and the hunger, and leave the couple for later.
1861
Silas Marner
71/100
The gold goes and the child stays, and she is not a coin he spends.
A weaver loses his hoard and raises the girl left on his hearth.
Industry
8/10
Silas is a weaver, and the hoard sat beside that real work.
Household
9/10
A girl is left on the hearth; her father will not claim her.
Piety
5/10
No conscience makes the man who owes her a name take her.
Courage
7/10
He keeps the girl once the gold is gone and cannot be spent.
Republic
5/10
A child is left, and the man who owes her will not claim her.
Temperance
7/10
The hoard is lost, and he does not get to spend the child.
Truth
8/10
The hoard is stolen, and the real father will not claim her.
Stewardship
8/10
After the coins, what remains is the girl, not a symbol.
A little girl on a hearth is not a figure I will let the house spend. Silas loses his gold and finds her where the hoard was. The man who should have been her father will not claim her. Eliot wrote a book a house can read. I would wait until a child is old enough to hear that a father can refuse.
Then do this. Say to a child that the girl on the hearth is a life, not a stand-in for stolen gold.
1874
She keeps the farm, a joke valentine does harm, and the steady man is trusted.
A woman runs a farm, three men want her, and a joke valentine does harm.
Industry
9/10
Bathsheba keeps the farm, and that work is treated as real.
Household
7/10
Three men want her, and one is ruined by her refusal.
Piety
5/10
The book trusts the steady man, not the dazzling mistake.
Courage
6/10
Keeping the farm is the risk; a refusal ruins one suitor.
Republic
6/10
A farm has people on it who live by how she runs the work.
Temperance
6/10
A valentine sent as a joke is not nothing; it does damage.
Truth
8/10
The joke note is false, and a man is ruined by taking it.
Stewardship
7/10
The farm remains; so does the damage of a joke she sent.
Start with the farm, not the suitors. Bathsheba keeps it, and the work is real. One man is steady, one is a soldier, one is ruined by her refusal. A house can read Hardy here. Three men wanting her is not a substitute for the labor, and I was glad the book does not pretend otherwise.
Then do this. Do not send a joke note this week; Bathsheba's valentine did real damage.
1857
Madame Bovary
44/100
Adult: she buys a life she read about, and the debt is the bill.
A doctor's wife spends and takes lovers to live a story she only read.
Industry
5/10
She marries a doctor; his dull work is the life she rejects.
Household
6/10
The marriage is the life she has and spends to escape.
Piety
3/10
Her want does not stop her, and the state tried the author.
Courage
4/10
She risks the marriage for a life that only existed in books.
Republic
4/10
Flaubert was tried for the novel; the court took the book.
Temperance
3/10
She spends and takes lovers; the bills come and wanting stays.
Truth
8/10
The books she read are not her life, and the debt is the bill.
Stewardship
2/10
What remains is the debt. The purchased life was not hers.
Adults only. I mean the debt as much as the rest. Emma marries a dull doctor, spends money, and takes lovers to feel a life she read about. I will not describe the sex. Flaubert was tried for the book. Do not pass it to a teen as a refined kind of sadness. The wanting goes on a long time, and the household is what it uses.
Then do this. Lay a beloved novel beside a bill you owe and admit they are not one life.
1879
A Doll's House
58/100
She leaves the children. Do not turn the door into a smaller exit.
A wife who forged a signature walks out on her husband and her children.
Industry
4/10
Her act was a forged signature meant to save her husband.
Household
8/10
She leaves the children and the house. That is not softened.
Piety
6/10
He wants appearances; she stops living as the part he likes.
Courage
7/10
Leaving the children is the risk, and the play does not hide it.
Republic
6/10
A forged signature is a crime, whatever it was meant to save.
Temperance
4/10
The doll part was the life she kept until she refused it.
Truth
9/10
She hid the forgery; he wants the look of things, not truth.
Stewardship
2/10
The children are left in the house without their mother.
Do not soften the door. Nora forged a signature to save her husband and kept it secret. He wants the appearance, not the truth. She leaves the children and the house. A teen can read Ibsen. The leaving is the scandal and the point. There is no honest way to say she steps out and the play lets her back in.
Then do this. When you reach the last scene, say she leaves the children, and do not fix the door.
1895
Nothing serious holds, including the name, and they still want the wedding.
Two men pretend to be Ernest, and a baby was lost in a handbag.
Industry
2/10
Nobody works; the labor is keeping up a man named Ernest.
Household
5/10
A baby was mislaid in a handbag; they still want marriage.
Piety
2/10
Nothing in them stops the lie; seriousness is the joke.
Courage
2/10
The false names risk embarrassment, not a life they would miss.
Republic
3/10
Town and country are only the two places the pretense runs.
Temperance
2/10
Each new pretense is the pleasure, and the play keeps them coming.
Truth
3/10
The name Ernest is a lie, and the play will not make it costly.
Stewardship
4/10
A mislaid baby and a marriage: that is what the joke leaves.
A baby was mislaid in a handbag at a station, and Wilde treats that family story as comedy. Jack and Algernon pretend, in the country or the town, to be a man named Ernest. A house can read it. I laughed, and then the joke settled: none of the serious things, the name included, were serious.
Then do this. Admit one false errand you use to get out of the house, then read their Ernest.
1897
Cyrano de Bergerac
50/100
She marries the face, and the true letters were another man's feeling.
A man with the words woos for a handsome soldier, and she marries the face.
Industry
5/10
The soldier cannot write; Cyrano does the words in his place.
Household
7/10
She loves the voice and marries the face that lacked the words.
Piety
4/10
True feeling does not make him stop lying about whose it is.
Courage
6/10
He risks staying unknown so another man can wear his words.
Republic
4/10
He owes Roxane the name of the writer and gives her the face.
Temperance
4/10
Refusing to claim her only keeps the false courtship going.
Truth
7/10
The letters mix a true feeling with a lie about the writer.
Stewardship
3/10
She is left with the face; the voice was another man's.
She loves the voice and marries the face. I had the speeches in mind, and that result is what stayed. Cyrano loves Roxane and speaks for a handsome soldier who does not have the words. The letters are a lie that uses the truth of his feeling. A house can read Rostand. I would talk about the substitution, not only the nose people already know.
Then do this. Do not hand someone else a feeling of yours to deliver and hope the hearer guesses.
1891
Hedda Gabler
33/100
Adult, bored, and armed. The pistols were already in the house.
A woman who will not be ordinary tries to control other people's fates.
Industry
5/10
A former lover wrote what matters; Hedda is not the writer.
Household
5/10
She despises the marriage and will not live an ordinary one.
Piety
2/10
No scruple stops her wish to manage other people's fates.
Courage
3/10
Bored and armed is not the same as risking something for others.
Republic
3/10
She wants power over fates, which is not a debt to neighbors.
Temperance
2/10
She refuses the ordinary and reaches for other people's lives.
Truth
4/10
A manuscript that matters is a thing she is able to burn.
Stewardship
2/10
Pistols already in the house, and a manuscript she can burn.
The pistols are in the house from the start. Hold that before the evening starts to feel arranged. Hedda is bored, armed, and unwilling to be ordinary. A former lover has written something that matters, and she wants control of other people's fates. Adult. I will not describe the ending as a dare. I would not hand it to a teen who is already tired of ordinary rooms.
Then do this. Before you discuss Hedda, say the pistols were in the house from the start.
1890
Beautiful and cruel is the bargain, and I would not leave it with a teen.
A man stays young while a portrait carries the sins he will not wear.
Industry
2/10
No trade matters here; the portrait does the only work that shows.
Household
1/10
No marriage, parent, or child is a life in this story.
Piety
3/10
Conscience is parked in a painting, which cannot stop the wish.
Courage
2/10
He arranges not to wear the damage, so nothing dear is risked.
Republic
1/10
No neighbor, law, or town is owed a thing by this man.
Temperance
2/10
The wish lets him stay lovely while the sins keep arriving.
Truth
8/10
The face lies by staying beautiful; the painting keeps the bill.
Stewardship
2/10
What remains is a cruel man and a picture asked to age for him.
Oscar Wilde's novel is adult, and I mean that as a door I keep shut. Dorian wishes a painting would bear his sins. It does. He stays beautiful and becomes cruel. I am not going to describe the cruelties. The painting is the bill he will not pay in his own face. That is the warning. It is also why the loveliness keeps pulling.
Then do this. Turn one flattering photo face-down and name the bill that face is not paying.
1898
The Turn of the Screw
46/100
I will not tell you if the ghosts are real, and that is the point.
A governess grows sure two children are haunted by dead servants.
Industry
7/10
She is hired as a governess, and the children's care is the job.
Household
6/10
Two children live in that house, and no parent is the one on duty.
Piety
4/10
Her certainty feels like duty, and the book never proves it is.
Courage
5/10
She stays with the children in a house she has come to fear.
Republic
3/10
The duty is a private hire, not a debt she owes a town.
Temperance
4/10
Fear keeps feeding on itself, and the tale never puts it down.
Truth
5/10
It may be ghosts or it may be her, and the book will not pick.
Stewardship
3/10
What you leave with is two children and an adult who is afraid.
A governess is hired to a country house with two children, and she becomes sure they are haunted by two dead servants. Henry James will not settle the ghosts, and I will not either. A teen can read it. Don't turn the unread pages into a contest about who is clever at dinner.
Then do this. Read one chapter and stop before you decide the ghosts for anyone else.
1854
Walden
60/100
The cabin was an experiment he left, and the argument is what stayed.
Thoreau keeps accounts by a pond and calls most of a living a distraction.
Industry
7/10
He built the cabin and kept accounts, then doubted most livings.
Household
2/10
The cabin is an experiment, not a marriage or a child.
Piety
7/10
His conscience refuses the living the town calls necessary.
Courage
4/10
He spent two years by the pond, then walked back into town.
Republic
5/10
He owes the town an argument, not his labor beside a neighbor.
Temperance
9/10
The book asks you to want less of what people call a living.
Truth
8/10
He kept the accounts; the beans are not the claim he is making.
Stewardship
6/10
What he left is the book, not a household still at the pond.
He built a house by a pond, kept the accounts, and said most of what people call a living is a distraction. I read it tired, after the dishes, which is a fair test. The cabin is not a family. It is an experiment. He walked back into town. If you wanted a man who stayed and raised people there, this is the wrong book.
Then do this. Write down one week's costs and mark which ones he would call a distraction.
1855
Leaves of Grass
53/100
No plot to follow, only a voice that will not treat a body as a shame.
Whitman names trades, bodies, and a country in a book he kept revising.
Industry
8/10
The catalog of trades is the praise, not scenery behind a hero.
Household
2/10
Bodies are sung; a marriage or a child is not the life here.
Piety
4/10
The body is not a shame here, and conscience is not the brake.
Courage
5/10
He kept revising a book that puts the body out in the open.
Republic
8/10
He tries to hold a whole country inside one voice.
Temperance
3/10
Nothing here puts wanting down; the body is welcomed, not checked.
Truth
6/10
He names trades and bodies instead of hiding them in a plot.
Stewardship
6/10
What remains is a book of poems he would not stop revising.
Leaves of Grass is not a story you finish and retell at bedtime. Walt Whitman kept revising it. He names trades, bodies, and a country he wants held in one voice. The body is not a shame in this book. I should say that before a teen opens a section, because some houses are ready and some are not.
Then do this. Read one trade he names aloud and ask who in your week does that work.
1845
The Raven
26/100
Read it aloud once, then remember the bird never counseled anybody.
A grieving student questions a raven that answers only nevermore.
Industry
2/10
A student sits with grief; no job is done or even missed.
Household
3/10
Lenore is the woman he grieves, already gone from the room.
Piety
2/10
Nothing in him stops the next question; he supplies the despair.
Courage
2/10
He risks nothing he would miss; the loss has already happened.
Republic
1/10
No neighbor, law, or town comes into the room with the bird.
Temperance
2/10
Each answer trains him to ask for a worse one.
Truth
7/10
He calls a one-word bird a dialogue, and the poem shows the cheat.
Stewardship
2/10
Nothing is left afterward but the word he taught himself to hear.
A student grieves a woman named Lenore. A raven comes in and answers only nevermore. A house can read it aloud, and that is the right size. I did. The room went quiet in the cheap way a repeated word can force. That quiet is not wisdom.
Then do this. Read the poem aloud once, then stop before you ask the bird again.
1843
The Tell-Tale Heart
31/100
The guilt is a sound he cannot outsit, and I will not narrate the rest.
A killer tells of an eye, a body under the floor, and a confession.
Industry
1/10
Nobody works; the telling is a confession, not a trade.
Household
2/10
The old man is there for an eye, not as a life the house keeps.
Piety
5/10
Conscience misses the act; the sound drags the confession out of him.
Courage
1/10
He risks nothing he would miss; he hides, then cannot bear it.
Republic
4/10
The confession is the only payment a law could get from him.
Temperance
2/10
An eye becomes a fixation, and he does not put that want down.
Truth
8/10
What he hid under the floor will not stay a lie he can live with.
Stewardship
2/10
Nothing is left for anyone after but the confession and the sound.
Edgar Allan Poe lets the man who did it do the telling. An old man is killed because of an eye, the body is hidden under the floor, a heart is heard, and he confesses. Leave the killing undescribed. A teen can read it. I would sit nearby and refuse to make a stunt of it.
Then do this. After you finish, sit quietly and name the sound that makes him confess.
1839
Brother, sister, and the building fail together, and I would not linger.
A visitor finds a fearful brother, a buried sister, and a house that splits.
Industry
1/10
A visitor watches a sick heir; no job is done that matters.
Household
6/10
A brother and a sister are the life of the house, and it fails.
Piety
2/10
Fear runs the household; conscience never questions the burial.
Courage
2/10
Roderick is sick with fear, and the visitor risks no life he has.
Republic
1/10
The house owes no neighbor and no town; it ends by itself.
Temperance
3/10
The family illness spends them; nothing they want is put down.
Truth
6/10
They bury a sister who may not have been dead, and the house answers.
Stewardship
1/10
The house splits, and nothing is left standing for anyone after.
A visitor finds Roderick Usher sick with fear. The sister is buried and may not have been dead. The house splits. Leave the burial where the story puts it. A teen can read it. One pass was enough for me. The family and the building are one illness.
Then do this. Name one family trouble you have blamed on the building instead of the people.
1819
Rip Van Winkle
29/100
He slept through a revolution, and the joke lands on his wife.
Rip sleeps through the Revolution and wakes to a dead wife and a new sign.
Industry
2/10
He sleeps out the years; the work of a life does not get done.
Household
3/10
His wife is the domestic joke the story enjoys, and then she is dead.
Piety
2/10
No conscience wakes him; sleep is how he misses his own time.
Courage
1/10
He risks nothing he would miss; he sleeps through the Revolution.
Republic
5/10
The king on the inn sign changes while he sleeps through the public event.
Temperance
3/10
The tale enjoys his escape and never asks him to want less of it.
Truth
4/10
The changed inn sign is true; the joke on his wife is a cheap one.
Stewardship
3/10
He wakes to a dead wife and a country that went on without him.
This is Washington Irving's story, not the 1903 film. Rip sleeps in the mountains and wakes after the Revolution. His wife is dead. The king on the inn sign has changed. He slept through the public event of his lifetime. A house can read that much to a child in one sitting.
Then do this. Name one public change you slept through, then drop the joke about the spouse.
1820
The town tells a ghost story, and I will not swear the ghost was real.
A schoolmaster and a rival want the same girl until a night chase ends it.
Industry
5/10
Ichabod is a schoolmaster, and he also wants the farm.
Household
4/10
He wants a daughter and a farm; a marriage is the prize, not a life yet.
Piety
3/10
The valley tells a ghost story; conscience does not stop the chase.
Courage
3/10
A night chase ends his time there; fright is not a risk he chose.
Republic
5/10
The ghost is a story the town tells, which is not the same as a fact.
Temperance
3/10
He wants the farm and the girl together, and that want drives him.
Truth
6/10
The book will not certify the horseman; the town story is all you get.
Stewardship
4/10
Ichabod leaves the valley; the town keeps its tale and the girl.
Ichabod Crane wants a farm and a daughter. Brom Bones wants the same girl. A chase at night ends Ichabod's time in the valley. Washington Irving, and a house can read it. Children remember the ride. I remember what he was chasing before anything rode after him.
Then do this. Retell the night chase once without deciding whether the horseman was real.
1895
The Red Badge of Courage
50/100
He wanted a wound as proof, ran, and came back still lost in the smoke.
A young soldier flees a battle, then returns, still unsure of the fight.
Industry
6/10
Soldiering is the work, and he cannot see the shape of it.
Household
2/10
No marriage or child is a life here; he is a boy in a battle.
Piety
5/10
He wants to look brave, which is not a conscience that holds him.
Courage
6/10
He flees, then returns, a boy in the smoke without the fight's shape.
Republic
6/10
He owes the line he ran from, whether or not he understands the battle.
Temperance
4/10
Wanting a wound so he will look brave is a hunger for the look.
Truth
7/10
The flight tells on the wish to look brave before he has stood.
Stewardship
4/10
He returns to a fight he cannot see, and glory is not what remains.
Looking brave is the hunger Stephen Crane gives Henry Fleming. He wants a wound so he will look brave. He flees a battle and later returns. I am not lingering on the bodies. A teen can read it. The courage is not a speech. It is a boy in the smoke who does not know the shape of the fight.
Then do this. Notice one time you wanted a visible wound so someone would call you brave.
1861
Adult, and the hiding was a mother's work, not a tale I will decorate.
Jacobs hid for years in a small attic to stay near her children and escape.
Industry
6/10
Years in a small attic are the labor that kept her near her children.
Household
9/10
She hid to stay near her children; they are the life, not a prop.
Piety
8/10
Conscience makes her refuse a claim the law allowed a man to make.
Courage
9/10
She spent years in a small attic to stay near her children and escape.
Republic
8/10
She tells what the law allowed, a debt the public did not pay.
Temperance
5/10
The account records a claim she fled; it does not school you to want more.
Truth
9/10
Under a pseudonym, she still tells what the law allowed him to do.
Stewardship
8/10
What remains is the record, and the children she would not leave.
Harriet Jacobs published this under a pseudonym. She hid for years in a small attic to stay near her children and to escape a man who claimed her. Adult. I will not describe the sexual coercion, and I will not let a summary sneak it back in. A teen can read it with that warning. The hiding is the fact worth staying on.
Then do this. Read the hiding, then say what that law let a man claim over a girl he held.
1900
Read Baum's 1900 book: she wants home, the road is the fun, and the wizard is a man.
Baum's 1900 book, not the 1939 film: a cyclone, a long walk, and a man behind a curtain.
Industry
4/10
The wizard's greatness is a show; her real errand is getting home.
Household
7/10
A child and a dog are carried off, and home is what she wants.
Piety
3/10
No creed stops the walk; the road itself is the pleasure.
Courage
6/10
She walks a strange road with a dog, a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion.
Republic
5/10
A city takes its wonder from a man hiding behind a curtain.
Temperance
5/10
Home is the want, but the pleasure the book keeps offering is the road.
Truth
8/10
The wizard is a man behind a curtain, not the power the city believed.
Stewardship
6/10
What she wants left to her is home, not the city to keep.
This is the book, 1900, L. Frank Baum. Not the 1939 film and not the 1910 reel. A cyclone takes Dorothy and a dog to a city. She walks with a scarecrow, a tin man, and a lion. Home is the want. The road is the pleasure. I can say that to a child without humming anything from a picture we are not reading.
Then do this. Read a chapter of the 1900 book and tell them the wizard is a man, not a song from the movie.
1881
Heidi
64/100
A bitter grandfather thaws, and a city house makes the mountain child sick.
Spyri's Heidi is left on a mountain, then taken to a city house where she sickens for the air.
Industry
6/10
A city house hires her as a companion, and that use makes her sick.
Household
9/10
A girl left with her grandfather thaws him, and that bond is the life.
Piety
4/10
A bitter man softens because the child stays; the page is not a creed.
Courage
6/10
She is left with a bitter old man, then taken off the mountain she needs.
Republic
4/10
A richer house borrows a child; the debt is to her, not to a town.
Temperance
7/10
The city want for a little companion is answered by her body failing.
Truth
8/10
The mountain is not magic; her sickness says the city house was wrong.
Stewardship
7/10
What should be left her is the air and the place her body knows.
Heidi is left with a bitter old man, and she thaws him. That is the first half I trust. Johanna Spyri, 1881. A girl, a grandfather, a mountain. Then a city house takes her as a companion. She sickens for the altitude and the air. The mountain is not magic. It is the place her body knows. I don't need to add a miracle to make it land.
Then do this. Walk a child outside for one chapter's time and say Heidi sickened when the city kept her in.
1883
Collodi's puppet runs, lies, and is nearly a donkey; the cartoon is the soft memory.
The 1883 book, not the cartoon: a bad puppet runs off, lies, and nearly becomes a donkey.
Industry
5/10
He runs away, and the book treats that flight as the failed work.
Household
7/10
A puppet runs off, and a cricket has to give the warning.
Piety
6/10
The cricket warns him, and at the start he is not good enough to hear.
Courage
4/10
He runs away and lies, and is nearly turned into a donkey for it.
Republic
4/10
A boy's disobedience, not a debt he pays to a town or a law.
Temperance
8/10
The fun of running off is checked by nearly becoming a donkey.
Truth
9/10
The nose is the bill for the lie, and the book is harder than the cartoon.
Stewardship
5/10
Left on him: a nose that marks the lie, and a body nearly a donkey.
He is not good at the start. Carlo Collodi, 1883. A puppet runs away, lies, and is nearly turned into a donkey. A cricket warns him. The nose is the bill for the lie. I grew up on the later cartoon, and this is harder than that memory. A child can read it. I would not pretend the songs are in the book.
Then do this. Tell them this is Collodi's book, then read where the lie is billed on his nose.
1843
The Ugly Duckling
56/100
The yard pecks him, he lives through winter, and the end is a swan, not payback.
Andersen's bird, hatched in the wrong yard, survives a winter and is recognized as a swan.
Industry
2/10
No trade; surviving a winter is endurance, not a job.
Household
7/10
He is hatched into a yard that is not his family and pecks him.
Piety
3/10
No conscience stops the pecking; he simply lives on.
Courage
7/10
He survives a winter after the yard has pecked him.
Republic
5/10
The yard is a little public that is cruel, and he does not punish it.
Temperance
7/10
The ending is recognition, not the revenge a hurt child expects.
Truth
8/10
He is a swan; the yard was wrong about the bird it pecked.
Stewardship
6/10
What remains is a living swan, not a yard that was taught a lesson.
A bird hatched in the wrong yard. Hans Christian Andersen, 1843. The yard pecks him. He survives a winter. He is a swan. The cruelty of the yard is ordinary, which is why I don't dress the neighbors up as monsters. A child can hear it. I was ready for a moral pasted on the end, and the end is simpler than that.
Then do this. Read the duckling aloud and refuse any ending the child adds where the yard gets punished.
1837
Swindlers sell an empty cloth, and the adults stay quiet because they are afraid.
Andersen's court pretends to see a cloth, and a child says the emperor is naked.
Industry
4/10
The swindlers' work is selling a cloth that does not exist.
Household
6/10
A child, not a courtier, is the one who says he is naked.
Piety
6/10
Fear, not conscience, keeps the adults from saying what they see.
Courage
8/10
The child speaks; the adults will not risk being called unfit.
Republic
8/10
A court owes the city the truth and pays that debt with silence.
Temperance
6/10
The emperor's want for a splendid cloth is what lets the swindle start.
Truth
9/10
The cloth is a lie, and a child says plainly that he is naked.
Stewardship
5/10
Left behind: one true sentence, and a court that was too afraid to say it.
Swindlers sell a cloth that the unfit cannot see. No one will admit the emperor is naked. A child says it. Hans Christian Andersen, 1837. A child can hear it. I don't need a second meaning. The fraud is the cloth, and the court agrees to see it. I was tired, and the story did not ask me to admire the emperor.
Then do this. Ask who would stay quiet to avoid looking unfit, then read the child in Andersen who will not.
1844
The Snow Queen
63/100
A girl walks north after a boy the ice stole, and I would read that to a child.
A glass splinter and an ice queen take a boy; Gerda walks after him.
Industry
5/10
Gerda's walk north is the only labor, and nobody else has a trade.
Household
7/10
A queen of ice takes a boy, and Gerda goes after that child.
Piety
6/10
The cold is a heart that cannot feel, so his conscience has gone quiet.
Courage
8/10
Gerda walks after the stolen boy into the north and does not stop.
Republic
4/10
She owes the walk to one boy, not to a law or a town.
Temperance
6/10
The ice keeps the boy; the tale does not teach you to want the cold.
Truth
7/10
A piece of broken mirror sticks in his eye and in his heart.
Stewardship
7/10
She spends the tale walking after a boy the ice took from home.
A mirror breaks, and a piece of glass sticks in a boy's eye and in his heart. A queen of ice takes him. Gerda walks after him. Andersen, 1844, and a child can hear it. I would read it that way: the cold is a heart that cannot feel, and a girl will not leave him where the ice put him. Say, before the first page, that this is not a later cartoon.
Then do this. Read Andersen's Snow Queen aloud and say, before page one, that it is not a later cartoon.
The fairy tales
1756
Beauty and the Beast
90/100
The one fairy tale here that scores like a novel. A promise is kept, and the sisters' greed is not the prize.
A daughter takes her father's place in a beast's house, and she goes back when she said she would.
Industry
9/10
Beauty does the quiet work of the house. The story is not about a trade.
Household
9/10
She offers herself in her father's place. The sisters want the riches and not the duty.
Piety
9/10
She learns to see past a shape. Kindness is a decision, not a spell she casts.
Courage
9/10
She rides to the beast's house and stays.
Republic
9/10
One merchant family and one enchanted house. A town is not the point.
Temperance
9/10
Her sisters' appetite is shown as small. Hers is put second to a promise.
Truth
9/10
She said she would return. She returns. The beast's shape was never the lie.
Stewardship
9/10
A father is saved, and a house that was a prison becomes a household.
This is Madame de Beaumont's tale, not a studio picture. Beauty's father takes a rose. The price is one of his daughters. She goes so he does not have to. Later she is allowed to visit home, and she almost stays too long. She goes back because she said she would.
Then do this. Keep one promise this week that nobody is going to remind you about.
1890
The Three Little Pigs
66/100
A short lesson in work. Straw is faster. Brick is what you can hand to someone else.
Two houses fall down. The one built slowly does not.
Industry
9/10
The whole tale is how well the house was built.
Household
6/10
Brothers. In the kinder telling, the careful one lets the others in.
Piety
4/10
No reverence. The rule is practical.
Courage
7/10
He does not open the door just because the wolf is loud.
Republic
6/10
A house that holds is a small order. The wolf is force with no right.
Temperance
7/10
The shortcut, straw and sticks, is the appetite for finishing early.
Truth
6/10
The wolf pretends. The brick house does not have to believe him.
Stewardship
8/10
What lasts is the point. A house made in an afternoon is not an inheritance.
The wolf is not the subject. The walls are. Two pigs want to be done. One pig does the slow work. When the danger comes, only the slow work is still there.
Then do this. Finish one job in the house properly, even if a faster version would pass.
1812
Rumpelstiltskin
59/100
A name breaks a bad bargain. The child was never his to trade.
A father's boast sells his daughter into an impossible job. The price of help becomes her child.
Industry
7/10
Straw into gold is a lie about work. The real work is getting out of a bargain.
Household
6/10
A father boasts his daughter into danger. The baby is the stake.
Piety
4/10
No conscience until the mother is about to lose the child.
Courage
6/10
She has to learn the name. Nobody else will do it.
Republic
4/10
A mill and a king. The king is a threat, not a law.
Temperance
5/10
The little man wants a child the way other tales want gold.
Truth
8/10
The father's lie starts it. The true name ends it.
Stewardship
7/10
What must not be handed over is the child.
A miller tells a king that his daughter can spin straw into gold. She cannot. A strange man does it for her, and the last price is her first child. The tale is not cute once you say that sentence plainly.
Then do this. Do not promise another person's work, or another person's child.
1812
Hansel and Gretel
56/100
Appetite is the witch's house. The harder fact is that the parents sent them there.
Parents leave two children in the woods. A house made of food is the second trap.
Industry
6/10
The children have to find their own way back. The candy house is not work.
Household
4/10
A stepmother talks a father into abandoning his children. The house fails first.
Piety
3/10
Nobody prays. Survival is the only law in the woods.
Courage
8/10
Gretel puts the witch into the oven the witch had lit for them.
Republic
4/10
There is no town. There is a family that will not feed its own.
Temperance
9/10
The sweets are the bait. Eating the house is how the witch gets them.
Truth
6/10
The witch pretends to be a kind old woman. The tale does not believe her.
Stewardship
5/10
They come home. The story is about not being eaten, not about what they will build.
The part people remember is the gingerbread. The part the score has to count is the opening. There is not enough food, and the adults decide the children are what the house can spare. That is a household failing before the witch appears.
Then do this. If the house is short of something, say so. Do not make a child the thing you cut.
1697
Little Red Riding Hood
90/100
The rule is small enough for a child: stay on the path, and do not tell a stranger the house.
A girl leaves the path, tells a wolf where her grandmother lives, and notices the truth too late.
Industry
9/10
The errand is a small job. The tale is not about work.
Household
9/10
A mother, a grandmother, and a girl carrying food between them.
Piety
9/10
No reverence. The rule is a warning, not a prayer.
Courage
9/10
She is not brave. In the Grimm telling, someone else cuts them out of the wolf.
Republic
9/10
The path is the village's rule. Leaving it is how the wolf gets the address.
Temperance
9/10
Straying and talking too much are the faults the tale exists to punish.
Truth
9/10
The wolf lies in the bed. Her questions come after she has already believed him.
Stewardship
9/10
Grandmother is saved in one telling and eaten in another. Nothing is planted.
Charles Perrault's girl does not survive. The Brothers Grimm send a hunter. Either way, the mistake is the same. She was told to go straight to her grandmother. She stops, she talks, and she gives a predator the door.
Then do this. Tell a child one rule you actually mean, and what happens if it is broken.
1812
Snow White
55/100
Vanity is the danger. The dwarfs' house is only a pause, not a family.
A woman who cannot bear a younger face tries three times to kill a child. The apple works.
Industry
6/10
She keeps house for the dwarfs. That is the one piece of ordinary work.
Household
5/10
A mother is dead. A stepmother wants the girl dead. The dwarfs are shelter, not parents.
Piety
4/10
The mirror is a rival, not a conscience.
Courage
6/10
She is hunted. She does not win by fighting. She survives by being warned, and then she forgets.
Republic
5/10
The dwarfs have an order: do not open the door. She breaks it.
Temperance
7/10
The queen's appetite to be the fairest is the plot. The apple is how it gets in.
Truth
6/10
The queen lies three times, as a peddler. The tale never treats the lie as clever.
Stewardship
5/10
A prince carries her off. The story ends in a court, not in a house she built.
The Grimm telling is not gentle. The queen wants Snow White's lungs and liver. She comes back with laces, a comb, and an apple, and the girl opens the door every time after she was told not to. The dwarfs are right. She does not stay careful.
Then do this. Pick one door in your house that should stay shut, and say why.
1697
Bluebeard
90/100
The murders are the crime. The old tale is more interested in the woman who looked. That is the fault in the tale.
A rich man gives his wife every key but one. The locked room is full of the wives before her.
Industry
9/10
His wealth is not work. Her test is a key, not a job.
Household
9/10
The marriage is a trap. Her sister is the one who keeps watch at the door.
Piety
9/10
A forbidden room is a conscience test. The bodies inside are his, and the tale hurries past that.
Courage
9/10
She holds the tower until her brothers come. That wait is real.
Republic
9/10
No town, no law, until brothers with swords arrive.
Temperance
9/10
Curiosity is what the tale punishes. His appetite for killing is worse, and the tale spends less time on it.
Truth
9/10
The key stays bloody. The room will not let her hide what she saw.
Stewardship
9/10
Nothing is left but a fortune taken off a murderer.
Bluebeard tells his wife she may open every door except one. She opens it. The floor is the dead wives. The key will not wipe clean, so he knows. In Perrault, her brothers kill him and she inherits the money.
Then do this. If you tell this one, say who the murderer is before you say who opened the door.
1734
Jack and the Beanstalk
90/100
The lowest tale on this shelf. The story cheers a theft and calls the boy clever.
A boy sells the family cow for beans, climbs into a giant's house, and steals until he is rich.
Industry
9/10
His mother is poor. He trades away the cow, which was the household's real asset.
Household
9/10
A widow and her son. He does not ask her before he risks what they have.
Piety
9/10
No conscience. The giant's wife helps him, and he robs her house anyway.
Courage
9/10
The climb and the escapes take nerve. Nerve is not the same as a reason.
Republic
9/10
He takes a harp, a hen, and gold from a house he was fed in. Strength is the only law.
Temperance
9/10
Magic beans and someone else's gold. The wanting is the plot, and it is rewarded.
Truth
9/10
He hides, he lies, and the tale treats the lying as the fun.
Stewardship
9/10
The fortune at the end was stolen. Nothing was built for the people after him.
Jack's mother is angry because he sold the cow. The rest of the story tells the child not to worry, because the beans were magic and the giant deserved to be robbed. Some tellings say the giant stole the goods first. The tale a child usually hears does not. It says Jack is clever.
Then do this. After you tell it, ask whether Jack had a right to the hen. Accept the answer the child actually gives.