Ruth Sawyer

I wonder if you know that stories have a way of beginning themselves? Sometimes they even do more than this. They tell themselves—beginning and ending just where they please—with no consideration at all for the author or the reader. Perhaps you have discovered this for yourself; you may have in mind this minute some of the stories that you wished had begun long before they did—and others that ended before you thought they had any business doing...

An unashamed and quite delightful tale of 'Fancy and faeries', as the author terms it in her short foreword, where a magical bunch of primroses bought on May Eve brings the Little People into the life of the staff and children of a hospital, to benevolent effect. The buyer of the flowers is Margaret Maclean, nurse to the nine 'incurable' children of Ward C at Saint Margarets. She was once herself an 'incurable', before the old Senior Surgeon saved...

Johnny is leaving the farm because of hard times when his Journey Cake leads him on a merry chase that results in a farm yard full of animals and the family all together again.

Eight-going-on-nine-year-old Maggie Rose, who was born on the night before Christmas and named after a real live princess, is one of "those Bunkers," a lazy and shiftless family who live in a dilapidated shack on the wrong side of the Point, a resort spot near Bangor, Maine, and are known to one and all as the laziest, laughingest, singingest family for miles around. Tim and Liz bunker and their brood of seven children are without an ambition in the...

An Irish lad catches a leprechaun to take with him on a trip to America, where he impresses his new friends with the splendors of his homeland and helps bring a new schoolhouse to the town.

A tinker's child who grows up helpng everyone in her Irish village is rewarded in her old age with a cabin built by fairies on Christmas Eve.

Twenty tales for the holiday season selected for their spiritual value and literary quality. For readers who are tired of Christmas commercialism, or who feel that Santa Claus and reindeer don't tell the whole story, these classic gems provide a winning alternative. Selected for their insightfulness, spiritual value, and literary quality (nothing moralistic here) they project the spirit of the season in a fresh, compelling manner that will resonate...