Biblioteche dell'Alto Adige

Abstract: ISSN: 2397-9607 Issue 356In this 356th issue of the Baba Indaba's Children's Stories series, Baba Indaba narrates the French Child's Tale "THE CHILDREN'S FAIRY".A long time ago and far, far away, one dull, heavy afternoon, the long, dusty road looked quite deserted, not a horse or even a foot-passenger in sight. The birds were taking their afternoon siesta, and the leaves were hanging down languidly from the poor trees, which were dying with thirst. There were three solitary-looking, tumble-down cottages on one side of the road, and presently the door of one of them opened, and a woman's voice called out:"Come, Yvette, come, go out and play."In answer to this summons a little girl of some three or four years old soon appeared, and with great difficulty on all fours began to descend the steep steps from the house to the footpath. It was quite a piece of work, that perilous descent, and it was accomplished slowly, carefully, and very awkwardly by what looked like nothing but a bundle of clothes.When once she had reached the bottom of the steps, the child stood upright and looked round for a minute or two, evidently deep in thought, with her little finger pressed against her face. Play! Yes, it was all very well, but what should she play at?But, Yvette—on that deserted road, what could she do? Her father, a poor road-mender, earned only just enough to make a bare living for his wife and child, and certainly not a halfpenny could be spared for toys.Yvette sat down just near a great heap of stones, which her father had to break into small pieces in order to fill in the ruts. When she was comfortably installed, she began to fumble in her pocket, and there she certainly found all kinds of wonderful things.But what happened next you ask…? I mean, a child playing on a pile of stones next to a road. That can't be safe! To find out what happened to poor little Yvette, you will have to download and read this story to find out!Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories".Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story. HINT - use Google maps.33% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities.INCLUDES LINKS TO DOWNLOAD 8 FREE STORIES 

Abstract: ISSN: 2397-9607 Issue 283In this 283rd issue of the Baba Indaba's Children's Stories series, Baba Indaba narrates the Indian story of "JACKAL OR TIGER"In far away Hindustan a king and queen lay awake in the palace in the midst of the city. Every now and then a faint air blew through the lattice, and they hoped they were going to sleep, but they never did. Presently they became wide awake than ever at the sound of a howl outside the palace.'Listen to that tiger!' remarked the king.'Tiger?' replied the queen. 'How should there be a tiger inside the city? It was only a jackal.' And so they had a disagreement about what kind of animal it was.In the morning the king asked the guards what kind of animal it was, they replied "Tiger" for the queen had told them to say this as the king always had to be right. The king nodded and made no remark. He sent for a palanquin (a covered litter for one passenger, consisting of a large box carried on two horizontal poles by four or six bearers), and ordered the queen to be placed in it, bidding the four bearers of the palanquin to take her a long way off into the forest and there leave her. In spite of her tears, she was forced to obey, and away the bearers went for three days and three nights until they came to a dense wood. There they set down the palanquin with the queen in it, and started back again.Now the queen thought to herself that the king could not mean to send her away for good, and that as soon as he had got over his fit of temper he would summon her back; so she stayed quite still for a long time, listening for approaching footsteps, but heard none. After a time she put her head out of the palanquin and looked about her. Day was breaking, and birds and insects were beginning to stir. Although the queen's eyes wandered in all directions, there was no sign of any human being. Then her spirit gave way, and she began to cry.It so happened that close to the spot where the queen's palanquin had been set down, there dwelt a man who had a tiny farm in the midst of the forest, where he and his wife lived alone far from any neighbours. It was he who heard and found the queen crying, and it is here the story begins. For what the king and queen did not know was that at the time she was left in the forest, she had just conceived.So, what happened, did the king leave the queen in the forest? What of the unborn child? Did the queen make it to full term and did the child survive her labour? If the child did, was it a boy or a girl? It is well documented that many children born into poverty and squalor, often don't survive, mainly because of the environment they are born into. Lastly, were the king and queen ever reunited or was it really the king's intent to exile the queen forever? Anyway, to find answers to these questions, download and read the story for yourself.Baba Indaba is a fictitious Zulu storyteller who narrates children's stories from around the world. Baba Indaba translates as "Father of Stories".Each issue also has a "WHERE IN THE WORLD - LOOK IT UP" section, where young readers are challenged to look up a place on a map somewhere in the world. The place, town or city is relevant to the story. HINT - use Google maps.33% of the profit from the sale of this book will be donated to charities.INCLUDES LINKS TO DOWNLOAD 8 FREE STORIES

Abstract: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary is the title of M. R. James' first collection of ghost stories, published in 1904 (some had previously appeared in magazines). Some later editions under this title contain both the original collection and its successor, More Ghost Stories (1911), combined in one volume.There are eight classics by great Edwardian scholar and storyteller. "Number Thirteen," "The Mezzotint," "Canon Alberic's Scrapbook," more. Renowned for their wit, erudition and suspense, these stories are each masterfully constructed and represent a high achievement in the ghost genre. Montague Rhodes James (1862–1936) was a medieval scholar; Provost of King's College, Cambridge. He wrote many of his ghost stories to be read aloud in the long tradition of spooky Christmas Eve tales. His stories often use rural settings, with a quiet, scholarly protagonist getting caught up in the activities of supernatural forces. The details of horror are almost never explicit, the stories relying on a gentle, bucolic background to emphasise the awfulness of the otherworldly intrusions.LOST HEARTS (excerpt)It was, as far as I can ascertain, in September of the year 1811 that a post-chaise drew up before the door of Aswarby Hall, in the heart of Lincolnshire. The little boy who was the only passenger in the chaise, and who jumped out as soon as it had stopped, looked about him with the keenest curiosity during the short interval that elapsed between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the hall door. He saw a tall, square, red-brick house, built in the reign of Anne; a stone-pillared porch had been added in the purer classical style of 1790; the windows of the house were many, tall and narrow, with small panes and thick white woodwork. A pediment, pierced with a round window, crowned the front. There were wings to right and left, connected by curious glazed galleries, supported by colonnades, with the central block. These wings plainly contained the stables and offices of the house. Each was surmounted by an ornamental cupola with a gilded vane.An evening light shone on the building, making the window-panes glow like so many fires. Away from the Hall in front stretched a flat park studded with oaks and fringed with firs, which stood out against the sky. The clock in the church-tower, buried in trees on the edge of the park, only its golden weather-cock catching the light, was striking six, and the sound came gently beating down the wind. It was altogether a pleasant impression, though tinged with the sort of melancholy appropriate to an evening in early autumn, that was conveyed to the mind of the boy who was standing in the porch waiting for the door to open to him.The post-chaise had brought him from Warwickshire, where, some six months before, he had been left an orphan. Now, owing to the generous offer of his elderly cousin, Mr Abney, he had come to live at Aswarby. The offer was unexpected, because all who knew anything of Mr Abney looked upon him as a somewhat austere recluse, into whose steady-going household the advent of a small boy would import a new and, it seemed, incongruous element. The truth is that very little was known of Mr Abney's pursuits or temper. The Professor of Greek at Cambridge had been heard to say that no one knew more of the religious beliefs of the later pagans than did the owner of Aswarby. Certainly his library contained all the then available books bearing on the Mysteries, the Orphic poems, the worship of Mithras, and the Neo-Platonists. In the marble-paved hall stood a fine group of Mithras slaying a bull, which had been imported from the Levant at great expense by the owner. He had contributed a description of it to the Gentleman's Magazine, and he had written a remarkable series of articles in the Critical Museum on the superstitions of the Romans of the Lower Empire. He was looked upon, in fine, as a man wrapped up in his books, and it was a matter of great surprise among his neighbours that he should ever have heard of his orphan cousin, Stephen Elliott, much more that he should have volunteered to make him an inmate of Aswarby Hall.Whatever may have been expected by his neighbours, it is certain that Mr Abney— the tall, the thin, the austere— seemed inclined to give his young cousin a kindly reception. The moment the front-door was opened he darted out of his study, rubbing his hands with delight...